


Only Two

by RedHorse



Series: Dear Lily [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anti-Werewolf Politics, Excessive Mention of Magic Libraries, F/M, Gen, Hogwarts Second Year, Horcrux Theories, I think you’ll like it, Intrigue, Native American Character(s), Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ravenclaw Hermione Granger, Ritual Magic, Secret Relationship, Slytherin Harry Potter, This is going to be one of those Harry-gets-the-diary stories, Tom Riddle Psychology, Tom Riddle's Diary, Wizengamot, and if you hate that too maybe I can bring myself to write an action sequence, bear with me, but probably not, if not I’ll make up for it with politics, secret friendship, written by a non-psychologist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 52,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Harry is a second-year Slytherin, his mother is on Voldemort’s trail, Professor Snape is being nice, and Harry has accidentally acquired a dark artefact but he doesn’t want to give it up. (It’s really just a diary, anyway. How dark can it be?)This is the third story in a series set in an AU where James died saving Harry, and Lily survived and raised Harry in the wizarding world. You do not have to read the other installments to understand this story, so long as you are willing to forgive the departures from canon without an explanation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how to order things, but The Summer Effect takes place the summer before the starting point in Dear Lily and concludes just before this story, so if you’re a Snily person or for any other reason want to give it a try, I hope you do.
> 
> Everything recognizable belongs to JK Rowling.

_June_

Lily sat up in the cool, dim room, and looked down at the sleeping body next to hers. Severus was all limbs, and so tall that from a distance he always gave the impression of being lanky and angular. But in close proximity, he just seemed large. Substantial, smooth-skinned, and very, very male. The thought made Lily shiver in a way the cold room had not. The blanket was bunched around his hips, the cleft of his taut arse just visible, the deep groove of his spine impossibly long, his shoulders square and rounded with lean muscle. His hair was almost as long as hers, soft and loose.

Sleeping with Severus was a mistake that Lily kept making. She knew it was wrong to do something that filled her with so much shame, even though the source of that shame was difficult for her to puzzle out. It might be because she was sleeping with Severus in part due to pity. He was so deeply solitary, and apparently immune to any source of companionship except Lily. But then, it might be because she was sleeping with her son’s teacher, and her best friend and dead husband’s nemesis. Or it could be that even though she was sleeping with Severus, she insisted on keeping it a secret, even though she had always thought she didn’t care what other people thought.

It might be because she felt an answering vulnerability in herself when she stared into Severus’s impossibly dark eyes and found a secret softness there.

By the time Lily surfaced from the most intense period of grieving for James, she had still had Harry to think of, to prioritize. Occasionally she found a sexual partner to assist her with her basic physical needs. By the time Harry was at a point that it wouldn’t have been irresponsible for Lily to search for a more complete partnership, the idea held little interest for her. She thought she might have outgrown the urgent despair over someone else that had come over her - an illness, a delirium - when she fell in love with James as a teenager.

Lily listened to Severus breathe. She watched the expanse of his muscled back, the curve of the arm that was flung above his head, the sparse dark hair on the back of his absurdly elegant, long-fingered hand. She nearly surrendered to the urge to press her sated body against his for no reason but the pleasure of closeness, contact, companionship.

But Lily had never been one to surrender. She slipped noiseless and naked from the bed, walked briskly across the cold stone floor, and donned the robes that she’d left neatly folded on a chair by the fireplace. She hated the floo, but after a moment’s consideration, decided the rush of flames would be a more considerate way to part with a sleeping lover than the crack of apparition. Even at the level of Lily’s talent, the noise would still be startling and especially harsh in a room walled with stone.

“12 Grimmauld Place,” she said into the blue fire that leapt to life from the handful of floo powder. She stepped forward without looking back.

***

Hermione spent the summer after her first year deeply ensconced in the Wizengamot’s private library, trying not to dwell on the injustice of a public governing body maintaining a non-public library, reminding herself over and over, in an inner voice that sounded like Draco Malfoy, and quoted him, too, _It’s all right, Granger; “self-improvement is a selfless endeavor.”_

She had learned in her whirlwind introduction to British wizarding society, courtesy of said Draco Malfoy, her self-declared secret best friend, that the library was a relic of a pre-Democratic period in their magical nation. When magical society in Europe was still feudal, the most powerful lords contributed to a central library for their collective intellectual gain, though the old families certainly had their secret heirlooms in their own libraries as well.

When the Ministry was formed, a brief four hundred years ago, the library was appropriated by the new government. In the decades afterward, Wizengamot members were known to smuggle out the most valuable tomes originally contributed by their ancestors, so the breadth of unique work wasn’t what it once was. However, on occasion a bibliophile was made minister and sought to utilize public resources to expand the collection, and the end result of all of this history, recent and ancient alike, was the finest library Hermione could ever hope to see.

Hermione’s apprenticeship was under Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington, more commonly known as Scary Mary, a nickname that had horrified Hermione’s sensibilities until her elderly mentor had revealed, in phrasing characteristic of her caustic sense of humor: “Fuck ‘em, I  _am_ damn scary.”

And it was true. Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington was twice married and thrice widowed, officially, as her first husband, Phineas Black, had been declared officially dead twice in his life, whether due to mistake or resurrection, history couldn’t be certain. She still dressed daily in the traditional mourning attire of a dutiful widow in the late eighteenth century, which was roughly the moment of her first husband’s first death.

Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington was a vicious advocate of selective wizarding traditions and quick to dismiss others. She was without sentimentality or vulnerability that Hermiome could find, but she was a pragmatist. Which is why, despite her solid status as a Pureblood darling and advocate of so many conservative causes, she took one look at Hermione’s academic transcript and declared that they would be excellent friends, without commenting once on her parentage.

That declaration, taking place as it did on the occasion of their first meeting, left Hermione feeling pleased and hopeful, imagining a grandmotherly sort of relationship wherein Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington, font of wisdom, guided her young protege through the wizarding world with a gentle and affectionate hand.

However, Hermione soon learned that “friend” in her mentor’s mind meant “ally” and “resource” and other words that denoted a source of advantage, and really, that wasn’t so bad either. After all, Hermione already had the baffling and very physically demonstrative friendship of her secret best friend to adjust to. Any further development of her atrophied social skills would be too taxing and potentially jeopardize her ability to take full advantage of the library.

“Psst, Hermione,” Draco said loudly near her ear.

Hermione tried not to jump out of her chair, scowling at him. “You know I hate when people speak in libraries,” she hissed, at a far more appropriate volume. Draco had already told her that this was a baseless pet peeve in the wizarding world, especially in a library used primarily by adults, since anyone wishing to be left undisturbed could cast a silencing charm. But Hermione couldn’t help the effect of so many hours spent in muggle libraries in her formative years, and his talking bothered her just the same.

Draco rolled his eyes, but Hermione knew by now that the gesture was more fond than sincerely irritated. She also knew that he wouldn’t stop bothering her now that he’d decided he needed her to amuse him, so she closed her book and twisted on the bench to face him. He had sat angled toward her but with his legs away from the table, and she could see from his casual robes that he hadn’t been at his apprenticeship that morning.

“At least whisper,” Hermione murmured stubbornly. “I take it Lord Nelson is traveling somewhere that doesn’t take kindly to minor apprentices again?”

Draco’s apprenticeship with the Ministry’s ICW delegate was prestigious if fickle. Lord Nelson often evaded Draco’s company by claiming this or that foreign body prohibited children from accompanying the delegates. Still, Draco had done a lot of traveling and met three heads of state. If Hermione hadn’t had the library, she might have even been jealous.

“Yes,” Draco muttered. “But mummy took me shopping to cheer me up.” He brightened. “I got a pair of blue knee high dragonhide boots. Very sophisticated.”

“Mmm.” Hermione hoped her noncommittal noise didn’t betray her skepticism.

“Is Scary Mary done with you yet? It’s Saturday! Surely she won’t know if you skive off.”

“What did you have in mind?” Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington wouldn’t know, and if she did, she wouldn’t care. She had specifically told Hermione that she spent too much time in libraries for a young girl, and should spend her Saturdays getting more sunlight before she wilted like a sad plant.

“My mother is at the spa and my father is at the hunting lodge in Switzerland this week. Pansy is coming to the manor so that we can stay up late and transfigure water into whiskey until the elves figure out what we’re doing and threaten to fetch mummy. It’s a tradition.”

Hermione couldn’t deny a certain amount of intrigue. She’d been spending the summer with the Potters, an easy floo from the Ministry, and going home to her parents’ most weekends. But her parents were on holiday and while Hermione was somewhat star struck by Lily Potter, she and Harry had gotten off to such an awkward start that they didn’t really try to be friendly with each other anymore. Draco had arranged the accommodations and while Hermione was grateful and it had gone more or less smoothly so far, she wasn’t looking forward to an entire weekend there with nothing to do.

“Your parents leave you home alone all weekend?”

“Not intentionally,” Draco said smugly. “They think I’m going to Pansy’s.”

“All right,” Hermione said uncertainly. For someone who prided herself on being sensible, she had a way of getting caught up in Draco’s excitement and carried far off the course she would have plotted for herself. “Should I invite Harry?” It seemed like the polite thing to do, since she was staying with him and he was in their year.

To her relief, Draco made a face of feigned horror as though she couldn’t possibly be serious. Hermione laughed, and Draco grinned back at her.

Draco’s features, so refined they were sharp when he was sad or angry, lit up in a beautiful way when he smiled, which was most of the time when they were alone together. He sometimes reminded Hermione of a bird, all barely-contained energy and unconscious athletic grace.

“You won’t regret it,” Draco promised, and Hermione rolled her eyes.

“I’d better not,” she said, smiling, and forgetting to whisper.

She didn’t.

***

Harry didn’t know what he was missing, or his evening alone at 12 Grimmauld Place might have started off even more bleakly than it did. As it was, with nothing to compare it to, being solitary in the dark and hostile House was merely boring. He wandered the rooms on the ground floor, noticing how nicely the paint colors Lily had chosen set off the carved woodwork, some of which was sluggishly animated, as though the carved figures there didn’t think Harry was worth the effort to impress.

As he sometimes had over the summer when he was desperate to be entertained, Harry climbed the staircase to the attic and sat cross-legged outside the firmly closed door to the chamber where the a thousand-year-old hive of pixies had been moved during the renovations. Lily had negotiated and Sirius had signed, a lengthy treaty with the queen of said hive. The conditions included the hive relocating from the third floor bathroom and promising never to take blood from a nonconsenting human, even if it was “just a bit” and the human was “asleep anyway” and the bite “barely left a scar.” Harry rubbed the still-red mark by his right elbow with a scowl, and soon the pixie sentry appeared through the keyhole on the door.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here, man?” The pixie asked. “We don’t need supplies for two more days.”

Harry narrowed his eyes so he could better make out the sentry’s facial features in the poor light of the lampless hallway. All he had was the last of the evenings sunlight through the window directly behind him. The pixie was small, even for a pixie; roughly the size of a small moth, with sparkly fuschia wings. He wore a tiny loin cloth and nothing else, and his skin was a faint green hue that did not complement his wings at all.

“I was just checking in,” Harry lied. “Doesn’t my mother do that at night, when she’s about?”

“No,” the pixie said flatly. “Get lost.”

“Rude,” Harry observed. “I’m not in your territory, so you can’t make me go.”

The pixie had been hovering at Harry’s eye level, but now it rose to perch on the door knob, where it could fold its arms and scowl better. “Lurking around and acting like a dick conflicts with the spirit of our treaty,” the pixie said.

“You don’t sound like a several hundred year old magical creature,” Harry observed. “You sound like a twelve year old smartass.”

“I haven’t been speaking English that long. I probably sound appropriately archaic when I speak in a Celtic tongue, or old German.”

“How many languages do you know?” Harry was surprised. “I figured you all just...” he was going to say “spoke English,” but of course a mere moment of reflection made that supposition seem horribly naive and ethnocentric.

The pixie continued to scowl, but now it unfolded one arm to inspect its fingernails, a preening gesture, Harry thought. “We speak the language of any host, like proper parasites.” The pixie called itself a parasite rather matter of factly, Harry thought, but then again there was nothing intrinsically negative about the word.

“The Blacks were celts, originally,” Harry remembered, thinking out loud. “Your hive has been here longer than that bathroom, I guess.”

“As you’d know if you had paid attention during the treaty summit,” the sentry said. “But you didn’t grace us with your presence.”

Harry had still been feeling hostile about all the bloodletting he’d been subject to while unconscious, and the specialist had thought it best he keep his distance.

“Well, I’ll be going, then,” Harry said, wondering what the pixies did hour after hour, day after day in their hive that made the years pass tolerably. “What do you, um, have planned this weekend?”

The pixie gave him a blank look. “Big party,” it deadpanned. “I’d invite you, but we’re already at capacity.”

Harry matched the pixie's scowl and went downstairs.


	2. Chapter 2

_July_

Lily noted, waiting in the seamless, gleaming black sleeve of the hallway in the Department of Mysteries, that the furnishings didn’t take into account how long a sequestered witness might have to wait for her turn to testify.

For example, Lily had been waiting for six hours, and it was only thanks to her considerable skills in transfiguration that she had a semi-comfortable perch in a hovering camp chair that had once been a handkerchief. That morning, there had been three of them: Lily, Severus, and Flitwick.

  
Albus, as a member of the Wizengamot, was apparently trusted to remain true to his testimony without hearing the other witnesses’ versions of events. The charms professor had been the first to be called, and his time in the court room was brief. He’d left afterward. Severus has been inside for hours; he was either still testifying, or sitting in the gallery. They’d agreed he would be present while Lily testified.

Remus had offered to have someone watch Zack so that he could wait with her. She’d been touched by the offer, and remembered so many years before, after the war, when Remus returned from his time with Greyback pale and hunted, and testified on what seemed like a monthly basis for almost a year, dooming werewolf after werewolf, and a handful of marked Death Eaters, as well, to Azkaban.

Lily had declined, knowing it would be terribly awkward with Severus there, even if she knew for certain Remus would be impossibly polite.

The towering black doors suddenly parted. A ministry Paige poked her head out through the gap and gestured to Lily with a crooked finger. She went.

Quirnius Quirrell sat in the center of the room in a posture of defeat. The holding period in Azkaban seemed to have aged him a decade. Lily couldn’t help but disapprove, on principle. The wizarding justice system was archaic and brutal, not unlike the rest of it.

Still, she couldn’t harbor much remorse for Quirrell personally. She already knew he was going to receive a penalty far lighter than he deserved. The Wizengamot didn’t have laws against fraternizing with the disembodied souls of dark lords, after all, and even if they did...

No, the best they’d been able to come up with was assisting the admission and concealment of an uninvited person in a warded place; but since there was one count for each day that Quirrell had spent in Hogwarts with Voldemort in his head, the cumulative consequences were significant: up to ten years in Azkaban.

Lily walked to the witness chair, raised her wand in the traditional salute to the Wizengamot, and listened to the Ministry’s attorney’s first question.

“Mrs. Potter, please describe the events surrounding your first meeting with the man you believed to be Quirnius Quirrell.”

The prosecution led Lily through her testimony the way they’d practiced. And then, feeling less nervous now that she had said what she anticipated saying and earned an infinitesimal nod of approval from the prosecutor, Lily watched Quirrell’s attorney rise from his table and fix her with a grave look.

“Mrs. Potter, you claim to have confronted Professor Quirrell about your suspicions after spending months researching what you call ‘soul magic.’ Can you please define that term, such as it is?”

“It’s a field of magical study, as well as a classification for spellwork,” Lily said.

“A ‘field of magical study,’ you say?”

“I do.”

“Would you consider it a legitimate field of magical study in the British school?”

“It has not been officially designated as a separate field, but there are publications that claim it is a distinct study.”

“Claim, you say?”

“I do.”

“Then, you admit it’s not considered an _official_ field of study in The British school?”

“Yes, or rather, no, it’s not.”

“Yet you are citing the theory as evidence before a body that must apply British law?”

“How academics label something doesn’t effect the reality of the magic,” Lily said mildly, but she was beginning to feel her anxiety returning.

“There is, in truth, no existing study, or documented case, of the sort of soul magic you theorized between the long-dead Dark Lord and Mr. Quirrell, is there?”

Lily felt her throat close around her first answer, and managed instead, “The primary publications do not describe any personal observations, so far, sir.” She sent a silent but fervent curse at Olyphant, wherever in the world he might be with his fabulous, terrifying secret library. She wasn’t able to share what she’d found there in any fashion, apparently.

“The Wizengamot has reviewed your pensieve memory individually. You recall hearing a voice emanate from Mr. Quirrell’s body, while his mouth was motionless, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a muggle born witch, are you not, Mrs. Potter?”

Though it was clear she was intended to be embarrassed by the reference to her parentage, Lily refused to be ashamed, and lifted her chin as she said, “Yes.”

For some reason, in that moment she saw Severus, a stark monochromatic figure in the gallery, so somber amongst the colorful robes that were in style at the moment. His face , which so many thought inexpressive, was easy for her to read: concern, but simple admiration foremost. She blinked and looked at the attorney.

“Even amongst muggles, I believe there is a study known as ventriloquism ? Are you familiar?” When Lily nodded, the attorney smiled mirthlessly. “Describe it, if you would?”

“The, ah, ability to speak without visibly moving the mouth.”

“An excellent definition. And not even a magical skill, is it?”

“No,” Lily admitted, “but that’s not what happened in this case.”

“Perhaps not. There are other, magical alternatives to simple optical illusions, of course. For example, a sonorous and a disillusionment, or a partial confundus, could achieve the ventriloquist effect, true?”

Lily gazed at him, annoyed. “That Mr. Quirrell would stage such a performance seems unlikely.”

“Ah, perhaps. But what seems much more unlikely is that a dark lord, agreed to be long dead these ten years, might have instead the unprecedented condition of having not only sustained a soul in the realm of the living without a body, but also the unprecedented luck to have a sympathizer stumble upon such soul in a remote and magically restricted land, and the unprecedented persuasive abilities to convince such sympathizer to submit to sporadic possession, all with the very sinister ambition of teaching an entire year of defense to school children?”

Lily gazed at the attorney, reluctantly impressed. Thank Merlin she had low expectations of their likelihood of success, because this was going even worse than she’d expected.

“You had to be there, I suppose,” she said archly, and heard a bark of laughter from an ancient witch in what appeared to be mourning garb, confusingly.

“I suppose,” the attorney agreed. “Thank you, Mrs. Potter. That will be all, unless the Wizengamot themselves have questions for the witness?”

“Mrs. Potter,” the witch who’d been laughing said, voice still unsteady with suppressed mirth. “What motive would Professor Quirrell have had, to your knowledge, to convince a respected witch such as yourself that he was possessed by her husband’s murderer, the attempted murderer of her son?”

“I couldn’t say,” Lily replied In a similar tone.

Another witch on the court, a few seats behind the first to speak, leaned forward and said sharply, “Rosemary, you can’t possibly think the dark lord rose from the dead only to spend a year babysitting?”

The witch in the black veil didn’t turn. “Any questions should be directed to the witness, Lady Smythe,” she advised primly.

Lily recalled that a great great aunt of Augusta Longbottoms husband sat on the Wizengamot, and something else, about several husbands.

Lady Smythe was white haired but had the complexion of a Malfoy, so Lily wasn’t sure whether her hair was gray or blond. The light was poor, and she was wearing a rather jaunty peaked hat. She sniffed elegantly, and looked at Lily. “What motive would the dark lord have to impersonate a school teacher, Mrs. Potter?”

“Well,” Lily began, and the elderly lady Longbottom spun about in her chair to glare up at Lady Smythe, interrupting.

“Mrs. Potter,” she said, without looking away from Lady Smythe, “Was your child not the catalyst of Lord Voldemort’s demise? Would not assessing his vulnerabilities, in a setting out from under his mother’s watchful eye, make sense under the circumstances?”

“I,” Lily started cautiously, only to be swiftly cut off by Lady Smythe.

“Did your son report any threats upon his life this year, Mrs. Potter? Or unfavorable treatment by Professor Quirrell?”

“Mrs. Potter,” the widow began immediately, “What personal grudge against you might young Mr. Quirrell have had to stage such an elaborate prank?”

Lily no longer attempted to interject.

“Soul Magic is only theory, is it not Mrs. Potter? And all the alleged victims of possession were mere muggles? Have the flames of your family’s fame begun to fade sooner than you would have liked?”

“Did you come here expecting personal slander, Mrs. Potter?”

“Or was it a headline you were hoping for? Something to help sell a few books?”

“Enough,” the minister said. “If there are no sincere questions for Mrs. Potter, then I presume the Wizengamot is prepared for a motion.”

Lily left the witness chair and hurried into the audience, trying to ignore the whispers and stares. The only available space was next to Severus, and she remembered him mentioning once that he didn’t go out in public if it was avoidable. She supposed everyone their age and older thought of him as a Death Eater, and anyone younger was likely to have been traumatized by him at Hogwarts. The thought almost made her smile, and she found she was somewhat relieved to be forced to sit so close to him that his long, lean thigh was pressed against hers. When she glanced at him, though, he was still looking forward, his curtain of hair hiding his expression.

“I move that the accused be found guilty of the charges alleged,” said Albus Dumbledore, relatively conservative in his deep violet robes.

“Seconded,” said the widowed witch, finally facing forward again in her seat.

“All In favor?” Asked the chief warlock, a surprisingly young, dark-haired wizard not yet past middle age. His glasses were somewhat round, like Harry’s.

A distressingly low number of hands raised, even for Lily’s low hopes.

“Motion failed,” said the chief warlock, without bothering to count. “Any other motions?”

“I move we acquit the accused of all charges,” said a steel-haired witch with a ruffled white collar visible under her robes, a prim accent and what appeared to be a cat pin beneath her left shoulder.

“Seconded,” said a few members at once. Lily’s eyes roamed over the group after the vote. She took note of the ones who looked shame faced, not that she absolved them of culpability just because they knew better.

Professor Quirrell, upon being professed not guilty by an overwhelming majority, seemed to wilt in relief. Lily took in his pale face and haunted eyes, then surreptitiously moved her wand in her lap and took his magical signature, too.

She’d been perfecting a tracking spell not of her invention entirely, but an amalgam of a few classics. She supposed it was time to put it to the test.


	3. Chapter 3

_August_

Harry had, regrettably, had occasion to visit Malfoy Manor several times since his mother moved to London. She had enlisted Sirius to give Harry a whirlwind education in the mysterious world of Pureblood society, and as he was technically the senior male of the Potter house, Harry was accepted into some drawing rooms that were closed to his mother, who was apparently one generation too near his muggle ancestors.

To his amazement, Narcissa Malfoy was a Black, and Sirius’s first cousin. They were obviously not close, but apparently Narcissa was honor bound to Sirius as head of her father’s house and therefore wouldn’t turn him away when he turned up for tea with Harry in tow.

This meant that Harry had spent three collective hours sitting stiffly in a priceless antique chair upholstered in blue toile wherein jousting knights periodically impaled one another, avoiding Draco Malfoy’s eye and marveling at the manners of the Malfoys’ house elves. The only time Harry had been foolish enough to accept tea from Kreacher, he’d nearly take a sip before noticing the dead mouse floating in the cup.

By the mid-August awkward tea visit, Harry comforted himself with the thought that this was likely to be the last time they assembled in the silent decadence of what Narcissa called the morning room, at least until the next summer. He gazed down at the arm of his chair and watched a knight topple his opponent with a lance straight through the chest, then wheel his horse about toward the fallen body, dismount, and proceed to plant a foot on the slain opponent while he tried to jerk free the embedded blade. Reluctantly fascinated, Harry didn’t hear his name the first time Sirius said it.

”Harry,” Sirius said again, and this time Harry looked up hastily, and promptly spilled his tea. Sirius sighed and a house elf appeared and whipped the tea towel it was wearing off of its skinny hips to dab up the mess. Scandalized, Harry averted his eyes from the now-nude creature and blinked inquiringly at his godfather.

“Draco has invited you to the library, so Narcissa and I can finish our conversation without boring you.”

Harry turned his stare on Draco, skeptical about Sirius's use of the words "Draco" and "invited." Indeed, Draco had become very still, in the manner of a cornered animal. Narcissa smiled coolly at her son.

”As I said,” she murmured, but with a note of buried steel that reminded Harry very much of his own mother, “just yesterday Draco expressed his wish to show Harry our library. Go on, now, Draco. Don’t be shy.”

With a strained expression Harry thought a little disproportionate to the circumstances, Draco nodded and stood, gesturing to Harry.

”Yes, Harry, please join me.”

Trying not to roll his eyes, Harry stood and followed Draco out of the room and into one of the many long, wide, gracefully curving hallways in the manor which were sufficiently similar to one another to convince Harry he could never navigate the place without a guide.

Said guide whirled to face him as soon as they were alone. “Don’t think for a minute this was my idea, Potter. But it won’t be the first time my parents have forced a close connection on me.”

Harry’s brows rose. “She just has you showing me your library, Draco, not your underwear drawer.”

Draco, once Harry’s exact height, had grown several inches over the summer whereas Harry, to his distress, had not; but Harry was satisfied to find he still knew how to make Draco blush and sputter.

”Merlin, sometimes you’re such a...” Draco fell silent, apparently determined to cling to his own manners, even though he found Harry’s lacking. Harry, bristling, stepped closer.

”Such a what? Such a  _half-blood_?”

Draco looked surprised. “No, I was going to say American. You’re not a half-blood, Potter." He scoffed. "Don’t you know anything?”

”I’m not?”

”Of course not. You have two magical parents, don’t you?”

”But, I’m not a Pureblood,” Harry muttered, brows drawn together. Draco eyed him in the pitying way Harry recalled teachers observing slow students in primary school.

“No, Potter, you’re not. Didn’t the muggle schools teach you fractions?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Prat. So, show me the library.” 

Reminded, Draco glowered but led the way. All Harry knew was that they did seem to be going somewhere he hadn’t been before, if the unfamiliar portraits and the views out the occasional, soaring window were any indicator.

“Here it is,” Draco sighed, pulling open a door that was three times Harry’s height as though it weighed nothing. The enormous room beyond was swimming in sunlight, filled with circular bookcases the likes of which Harry had never seen before, and sparkling beneath the domed glass ceiling the centerpiece of the room was a fountain the size of a competitive swimming pool, filled with animated marble sculptures.

Harry stood there a while with his mouth hanging open, until Draco cleared his throat meaningfully.

”This is...” Harry searched for the right word. “Er.” He swallowed. “Some...library.”

Draco stared at Harry for several moments, then burst into laughter. It was a surprisingly nice laugh, and Harry wondered if he’d ever heard Draco laugh. Maybe a forced chuckle, in mockery, but this sincere, happy noise - no. Even at Harry’s expense, it was nice to hear.”

”It is,” Draco agreed, after he got himself under control and wiped his eyes, still wearing a wide grin. “‘Er. Some library.’ Indeed. Come on, Potter.”

The tour began with the fountain, which had been part of the grounds before the manor was built, and was apparently so ancient and special that no one even understood how it was magicked, but the whimsical figures transfigured themselves into different shapes to suit the taste of each master of the manor, and also recited poetry on request. Or without request, Draco added, shooting a particular griffin a very dark look. Harry didn’t ask.

Next came the shelves; standing like pillars furred with the leather spines of innumerable books, they towered to the ceiling and rotated lazily, while also drifting slowly across the floor like flower petals on the surface of a lake. Draco explained that there were portals in the floor which permitted the books to travel, via these columns, between the physical space of the principal library here at Malfoy Manor, and the various other physical spaces where Malfoy books were stored.

“Much more reliable than wizarding space,” Draco was explaining in his best impersonation of Lucius Malfoy's drawl. He especially annoyed Harry when he was like this. “In fact, wizarding space can become unstable when significant weight is involved, and requires routine maintenance, whereas...”

“My mom mentioned your library once,” Harry cut in, and didn’t notice how Draco scowled at the interruption; he was busy studying a large stone basin set into the wall beneath a long oval window, beyond which two white peacocks were circling one another in the attitude of fighting roosters.

”Watch that, Potter. I’m sure your mother has mentioned our library. Everyone admires it, though only a select few have the significant  _honor_ of seeing it in person. Potter, really! Must you touch everything?”

”What is it?” Harry obediently kept his hands to himself, but leaned over the basin to peer inside. Once he had seen a pensive in Sirius’s reading room, but this basin was deeper and narrower, seeming to disappear beneath the level of the floor.

”It’s a looking well, spelled for the library. It’s very delicate, don’t fumble with it. I’ll show you.”

Draco gestured hurriedly for Harry to step aside, and when he did, Draco took his place before the basin. Draco leaned forward and touched his wand to the surface of the water, which immediately lit up with a bright golden glow and swirled pensively. Then a book appeared on the elegant little table beside the basin.

” _The Experienced Flyer's Guide to Better Seeking_ ,” Harry read the title aloud. 

For some reason, Draco looked embarrassed. “It's meant to give you a book you need but don’t know how to ask for,” he muttered. “Intended for research.” He snapped his fingers and a House elf appeared. “Get that book out of here, Sunny,” he said.

”Yes, Master Draco. To your nightstand?” The elf squeaked.

”No! Back on its shelf, of course.” He compressed his lips and looked away from the basin. “Spells need tuning from time to time. Can’t say it’s accurate. Want to try it, Potter?”

Harry was curious, so he traded places with Draco again and dipped his wand in the water. Nothing happened, for about three seconds. There hadn’t been a delay when Draco demonstrated, so Harry was about to turn to him and ask what he’d done wrong when the water lit up in a forbidding red rather than sunny gold. The floor trembled slightly, and the elegant little table burst into flames.

”Potter!” Draco cried in dismay, dousing the small fire in his family’s priceless, world-renowned library with a rapid aguamenti. “What in the gods’ names...?!”

”It wasn’t me!” Harry said, despite the illogic of the claim. “I mean...it...oh, damn it, did I break the thing?”

Draco didn’t say anything directly to Harry, but he was loudly muttering to himself but at a volume that made Harry think Draco intended him to overhear. There were strongly worded statements having to do with Americans, essentially feral children, and mothers who insisted their cousins’ simple friends could see the library. Anything more was rendered inaudible by the arrival of several panicked House elves all speaking over one another in high pitched voices.

“Ottie is being so sorry, Master Draco,” exclaimed an elf prostrated near Draco’s right boot, a boot which Harry noticed was red and had a pointy, gold-tipped toe. He must be getting used to European wizarding fashion, he thought faintly, not to have noticed the boots sooner. The elf, presumably Ottie, laid her cheek against the floor. “Master Draco should stomp on Ottie’s disgraceful face. Ottie is cleaning master’s most precious looking well eleven times each week but Ottie must have cleaned improperly and Ottie is a worthless, sorry, terrible elf...”

”Now, now,” Draco said, stepping back from a Ottie and appearing disinclined, to Harry’s relief, to exact physical punishment. “Potter’s surely to blame. Such a well cared for instrument probably didn’t know what to make of his scattered brain. But we should have the specialist come have a look, in any case. Can Urtl fix the table, do you suppose?”

The situation thus transferred to the capable hands of the elves, Draco towed Harry to the library while ordering him repeatedly not to touch anything, and just as they were coming through the enormous door, Narcissa and Sirius appeared around the curve of the hall. 

“Did you like the library, Harry?” Sirius asked politely.

”Oh, Harry was stunned by the sight of it,” Draco assured Sirius, mustering a smile so false it was more a baring of teeth, before Harry could open his mouth. “I think the atmosphere really lit a fire in him.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but found himself blushing. Seeing this, Draco's smile was instantly less forced. They all drifted after Narcissa to the floo foyer, which took several minutes of walking to reach. They passed door after door and corridor after corridor, occasuonally glimpsing an elf. It seemed unfathomable to Harry that only three people were living in such a vast place.

In the floo foyer, two elves were hovering with Harry and Sirius’s cloaks, which they donned since they were going to the public floo in Diagon Alley, and not directly home. It had been raining when they left London. Sirius, prohibited from spoiling Zack at Remus’s insistence, took advantage of one on one time with Harry to buy him expensive things, which was usually pleasant for Harry but had lately involved more clothing and stationary than could possibly interest a twelve year old boy. Then again... Harry looked unconsciously at Draco’s boots, and revised that thought. Those things didn’t interest Harry, anyway.

Harry braced himself for floo travel by thrusting his hands in his expansive pockets, and immediately felt an item there, the first physical touch giving him something of a shock just as he stepped into the blue fire. The lurching floo journey left him unsteadier than ever, distracted by the object and that burst of sensation, but he attributed the odd feeling to mere surprise. By the time he was following Sirius out into the late summer crowds of families shopping for school supplies and eating ice cream in the last of the summer heat, Harry had realized the thing in his pocket was a book.

Harry withdrew the book from his pocket when Sirius paused to chat with a street vendor selling handmade chocolates. It was leather bound and unadorned, and not a book, Harry soon realized, but a diary. He opened the cover, flipped through the pages - it was blank, but rather battered. He rubbed his thumb over the cover. How on earth had it gotten in his pocket?

And what was this feeling he had, an odd compulsion to touch it? Perhaps it was just pleasant to touch old leather like this, Harry reasoned, gone smooth and supple from time and handling. He slipped the diary back in his pocket and smiled when Sirius turned to him with a handful of chocolate.

”Shall we have a look at brooms, Harry?” 

Delighted, Harry shouted in the affirmative, and Sirius slung an arm around his shoulders while they both laughed and changed course toward Quality Quidditch Supplies.

Despite the happy distraction, Harry’s hand lingered in his pocket, stroking the diary unconsciously, instinctively. 

Deep within the blank pages, a presence that had been long at rest stretched and stirred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be long. I don’t have an outline, but I have a feeling...plus I keep getting sidetracked making magic libraries.


	4. Chapter 4

Gilderoy Lockhart surveyed the sea of impressionable young people streaming into the Great Hall from his seat at the Hogwarts staff table the evening of the welcome feast. Nostalgia forced him into the memory of his own sorting. The Hat, perched on a stand at the front of the room in anticipation of its sacred task, looked precisely as ancient and unfashionable as Gilderoy remembered it. His eleven year old self had nearly panicked at the thought of that Hat, rendered frightfully unsanitary by the heads of generations of the British magical population, touching his golden curls. Even then, he had been fastidious with his appearance. _Cultivate your strengths_ was one of the basic principles of wisdom with which his muggle mother had armed herself and taught Gilderoy as a careful lesson. She had taken great personal pride in Gilderoy's good looks, and had a very transparent way of insisting that his good looks were going to be just as much use to him as magic could possibly be. 

That evening - Merlin, could it really be seventeen years ago? - Gilderoy had worn the Hat very briefly, but that had been time enough for him to receive a brief statement from the Hat, delivered in the weary tone of something that the Hat had to say more often than it would have liked.

 _Look,_ the Hat said, the way it did: noiselessly, but somehow still at high volume, directly into the part of Gilderoy's brain that received language. _You obviously belong in Slytherin. But I cannot put you there, and there is really only one other humane alternative._ The Hat paused, then, and proceeded in a different, slightly pleading tone. _Be gentle with them. Ravenclaw!_

Gilderoy was still blinking in confusion when the Hat was lifted from his head and he saw a contingent of first, second and third-year Ravenclaw girls standing at their chairs and clapping delightedly.

Over time, of course, Gilderoy deduced hat the Hat had meant. He hated to take issue with the judgment of a centuries-old sentient magical object, but really. He liked to think that if anyone with a muggle parent could survive Slytherin, it would have been Gilderoy. He was terribly well-versed in receiving flattery, and took pride in the art of giving it himself. It was one of his mother's arts, and the perfect compliment to the art of leveraging beauty. 

But then, he looked best in blue and had preferred Ravenclaw going in as a result. And in the end, he had to thank the Hat. Ravenclaw was the most politically flexible house, and as it turned out, a much better starting place for his biography - and his autobiography, though he thought that he probably could have made Slytherin work, narratively, had he been forced to.

These musings carried Gilderoy through most of the sorting, but it didn't matter; he didn't have to activate his brain in order to smile and applaud at all the right times and with just the subtle variation necessary for the impression of sincerity. He stood and bowed with his best modest grin when Dumbledore introduced him, rattled off his own pre-prepared lines, and then surveyed the food on the table and engaged in rapid calculations of volume and ingredients in order to most accurately assemble acceptable dishes in acceptable portions on his plate, without apparent care. _Count your calories_ , another lesson from mother, as well as, _Show no outward sign of internal struggles_. The latter he applied with extra fervor in his effort to refrain from shooting longing looks at the dessert tray.

Gilderoy cast thoughtful looks at Harry Potter, the only person in the room whose popular culture appeal exceeded Giloderoy's, and remembered some of the headlines when the news broke that the boy had sorted Slytherin. It hadn't infused the news cycle for long, but the boy's house had clearly gone against the narrative of the cherubic Savior that journalists had established while starved for fodder during the ten-year period between the dark lord's demise and Harry Potter's appearance at Hogwarts castle for first year classes. The boy was a slight little thing, but striking all the same. Complexion and eye color aside, the child had good bone structure, and "slender" could have its appeal, if someone would correct the boy's hideous posture. Just look at the Malfoy boy, Gilderoy thought approvingly, noting the boy sitting across from Harry had the white-blond hair and set to his chin that were so unmistakably Malfoy. Gilderoy had never seen Draco before but knew he could be no one else.

The Ravenclaw table would have been easily identified even without the banner and blue ties; the students had the same quiet restlessness Gilderoy recalled from his own days in their ranks, as though they would prefer to take meals in the library. A few were reading books. Gilderoy felt a stab of fond nostalgia. He, too, had indulged in the comfort of amassing knowledge as a child, though he had never lost sight of his first responsibility: _Distinguish yourself_. Mother's dearest lesson of all.

***

It had not taken Harry long to realize that the diary came from Malfoy manor, and that Harry having it was some sort of mistake. He tried not to think about it; what could it matter, anyway? It seemed unlikely it had any sentimental value - it was blank, after all, and there was a non-Malfoy's name on the cover. Harry had even casually asked Pansy, who had during some earlier phase in life internalized the family trees of the entire Sacred 28, whether a Riddle had ever married into the Malfoys, and she was sure she had never heard the name. It also seemed unlikely that a blank diary in used condition could have any monetary value, and Draco and his family had never, in Harry's experience, demonstrated any urge to be _thrifty_. He once saw Draco casually vanish a set of dress robes because he had already been "seen" in them. He was so meticulous with his parchment and quills that Crabbe had been hexed for disturbing Draco's desk while looking for a bit of spare wax to seal a letter.

The logical thing would have been to ask Draco, of course. If Draco hadn't recognized the journal, and had rolled his eyes when Harry attempted to return it, Harry could decide he had tacit permission to keep it. But there was a small part of him that insisted it wasn't worth the risk that the diary had some value to the Malfoys that Harry hadn't thought of, and it would be taken away from him. He had been carrying it everywhere with him in the inner pocket of his school robes, and found himself touching it throughout the day, subconsciously. The way, he reasoned, some people carried a river rock or one of those squashy balls that one of his muggle friends had been prescribed once for anxiety.

And why shouldn't Harry be a little anxious? _Professor Quirrell had been possessed by Voldemort. Harry had spent an entire year seeing Quirrell every day, which meant Voldemort had seen Harry every day._ In Harry's imagination, during a decade spent a step away from death, in a dark foreign forest and occupying the bodies of a miscellany of creatures, Voldemort's had grown to hate Harry with a special and specific intensity. Trying to kill Harry as an infant that Halloween night might have been impersonal, strategic. But now? It had to be a fervent wish to finish what he hadn't been able to then.

They had been in school for three days when Blaise found the diary.

Before it happened, the two boys were sitting alone in the Slytherin common room, and had removed their robes to sprawl on the sofas, casual in shirt sleeves and trousers. Blaise was interrogating Harry about his summer, with particular fascination for stories about the pixies, before they migrated to the subject of Kreacher, another of Blaise's favorites. Apparently some terrible accident had caused the Zabini family elves to disappear a few generations before, so they had human servants. Blaise was used to pretending he understood what people were talking about when they casually referenced their elves, but had amassed a list of questions he had been too embarrassed to ask anyone but Harry before.

"Where do they go when they aren't working? We had to have servants' quarters put in, my mother said, because the estate didn't have any when it was served by elves."

Harry thought about Kreacher and frowned. "I don't know. I have never seen Kreacher, um, at leisure, really. But he doesn't have a designated room in the house either." Harry felt a little bad that this paradox hadn't occurred to him before.

"What do they eat? How many people are they bound to obey?"

"Um..."

Blaise rolled his eyes. "Merlin, Harry. For someone with such intense focus when the subject suits you, you can be really oblivious. Are you still keeping those chocolates from your uncle in your robe pockets?"

"Yes," Harry said absently, turning the page of the piece of DADA required reading he had propped against his knees, and forcing himself to read another paragraph. This chapter detailed Lockhart's expedition to resolve a centuries-old interspecies and international dispute involving off-shore caverns, mermen, and starred Lockhart as the world's least likely ambassador. He didn't even speak mermish!

"I'll help myself, yeah?" Blaise asked, already reaching for Harry's discarded robes. "You haven't gotten stingy over the summer?" Blaise had gotten into the habit of reaching into Harry's pockets for candy when the mood struck during the last few months of first year. He swore his mother would somehow know the moment he purchased his own candy in Hogsmeade, and Harry was always well-stocked, part of Sirius's impulse to spoil children and its concentration on Harry.

"Sure, whatever you want," Harry said absently, snorting as he read another sentence. "Have you done the DADA reading yet? 'Then, without warning, I was confronted with the fearsome sight of an aged merperson of the male sex, wielding a trident and professing his hatred for the men of land, who had deprived him of his only daughter and the princess of his people. This I divined not through spoken word, but through the pain in his eyes and the expressive gestures of his hands, which awoke my considerable skill in empathy and a latent psychic power known to run in the Lockhart family...'"

Harry looked up with a smirk, but instead of listening to Harry, Blaise was studying the blank pages of the old diary and eating chocolate.

"Secret diary, Harry?"

Harry's grip on Lockhart's book went white-knuckled, but he kept an even tone. "None of your business, Blaise." Why should he care if Blaise handled the diary? It wasn't like he would glean anything personal from just looking at it. But Harry felt absurdly distraught, seeing someone else touch the cover and turn the curling pages. "Give it here."

To his surprise, Blaise tossed him the diary without argument. Harry snatched it from the air like a Snitch, then cradled it in the gentle, near-reverent way he always did. If Blaise noticed Harry's behavior and found it odd, he didn't say so. "What are you using? Disappearing ink or a spell?"

Harry looked up, blank-faced. "What?"

"To keep the writing from showing," Blaise said. "Don't worry, I don't want to read it. Well, I do a bit, but only because I'm extremely bored. You see, I've already done my DADA reading, which is how I know that at the end of the story, Lockhart frees the princess and is rewarded with gemstones and a plaque from the French Minister. Extra credit if you visit his office to admire it in person."

"Thanks for ruining the ending for me," Harry said archly, unable to help looking down at the diary and stroking the cover. _Disappearing ink or a spell?_

It wasn't a blank diary at all. The knowledge struck Harry right away, and with such certainty he felt like banging his head against the wall. Why did he still struggle to _think like a Wizard_? Instead he trusted his five senses as though they could never lead him astray. Harry didn't often resent his upbringing and all the formative years living in essence like a muggle, but this was one of those rare moments. He hated feeling so stupid. But more than that, he had the sudden, urgent need to _know_.

Snapping Lockhart's book closed, Harry stood up. "I...need to go to the library," he managed, heart hammering. Fortunately Blaise wasn't unaccustomed to Harry suddenly racing out of rooms without sufficient explanation. He just took another piece of chocolate from Harry's robes' pocket before handing them over and watching Harry pull them over his head. "I'll see you in the Great Hall for dinner." Harry grabbed his DADA book even though he had no intention of reading it, and held the diary tightly against his chest. He tried not to run up the stairs toward the library, organizing his research strategy in his head as he went. _Secret communication; writing spells; ink spells; diaries; creating records_.

As it turned out, it was easier to find what he needed than he could have anticipated. An elementary book discussing the merits of keeping journals to create a "personal account" for "generations to come" was one of the first he found. It listed the most common formats for personal diaries according to the classification and level of advancement of the spellwork, and a few simple experiments later, Harry was certain that the diary was the most advanced sort. The spell was complex, and highly unique, though loosely associated with the magic of wizarding portraits and pensieves: the Diarist's Copy Method, which allowed future generations to interact with the object conversationally, as though with the diarist himself. Harry, having made this deduction and after lifting a trembling hand and writing, "Hello, I'm Harry Potter," wasn't struck dumb with shock when the diary wrote back. But the hair on his arms did stand up a little bit.

_Hello, Harry. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you find my diary?_

Harry tried not to think too hard about the little book's sternly worded footnote: "The Diarist's Copy Method is considered dangerous for both the diarist and the future reader, with record of increasingly unpredictable behavior by the object particularly if the diarist is still alive. Also note, the Method does not contemplate or require a blood ritual, but neither is it barred; objects created with such an alteration of the Method would meet the definition of a dark artefact subject to registration under the Uniform Act Against Latent Threats of 1825."

Instead, Harry inked his quill, and wrote back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think my end notes are malfunctioning, but what I hope I can get this one to say re: Chapter 4 is that if Gilderoy Lockhart feels like he's coming out of nowhere and for no foreseeable purpose, I agree with you. But I'm sure I'll come up with something.


	5. Chapter 5

_September_

 

“What are you doing here?” 

While Hermione had grown accustomed to her mentor’s abrasive demeanor, she was still startled by the sharp question, coming as it did only a half second after she’d entered Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington’s personal offices in the Ministry.

”I have permission,” Hermione said faintly. “Once a week during the school year. Dumbledore lets us use his floo.”

”Oh yes, how could I forget, your  _special privileges_ from your  _enhanced apprenticeship_ program. In my day, twelve year old girls had their hands full with their regular courses. Gone lax, has it, Hogwarts?”

Hermione watched the old woman and considered the best approach. She was at her desk, which was coated with more precarious piles of parchment than Hermione had previously observed, and she was gesticulating with her long-fingered, heavily beringed hands in such a way that Hermione feared an inadvertent parchment avalanche at any moment. The girl advanced cautiously.

”Madam, is something troubling you?”

The fabric of Rosemary’s black robes came to a slight point at each shoulder. There was a lacy detail at her collar. Above all that, her face was pinched and every line there stood out, making her look every year of her age for the first time in her acquaintance with Hermione.

For a moment, Hermione thought she might be treated as an adult; that Rosemary might unburden herself, as she would to a woman her equal, and instill a confidence in Hermione.

But instead, Rosemary blinked and leaned back, her mouth turning up at the corners in her version of a grin. “Don’t you mind me, child. Now, tell me the truth. You’re only here for the library.”

Hermione was too stunned by the warmth in Rosemary's expression and her attempt at jocularity to dwell on her irritation from the moment before. She thought she knew what was bothering the old witch. She’d attended the trial a few weeks before where Quirinus Quirrell was acquitted and Lily Potter cast as a fool in the course of the performance. Her interactions with Rosemary since made it clear her suspicions as to the truth didn’t favor Quirrell.

Which meant that this wise, learned and clever witch thought the Dark Lord Voldemort was back from the dead - or wherever he’d gone - and was stalking Harry Potter, who was, inconveniently, Hermione’s school year-mate. 

She sighed, and spent a moment compartmentalizing. It was a skill she’d developed rather well since people first began telling her magic was real and that she was a witch and that time wasn’t constant and - well, since her Hogwarts letter.

”I’m here to work,” Hermione said honestly. “But only an hour each week.”

”Hardly seems to be worth all the unpleasantness with the floo,” Rosemary observed. “I always have preferred apparition, myself. Though even a port key is pleasanter than the floo. Very claustrophobic if you ask me, not to mention unhygienic.”

Hermione nodded obediently. She had never taken a port key and no one had ever side-alonged her. 

"I have nothing for you," said Rosemary. "Do you have anything for me? Questions?"

Hermione hesitated, but then, she had been _asked_ _._ "Well," she began. "I had wondered - do you know Lily Potter, ma'am?"

"Not at all."

"And did you...or are you, that is to say, especially knowledgeable about soul magic?"

For a long, increasingly uncomfortable period of time, roughly ten seconds or so, Rosemary stared at Hermione.

"This is about the trial?"

Hermione nodded, but something in Rosemary's tone kept her unsure.

“You’re wondering why it was so easy for me to believe Lily Potter. That’s what you mean to ask, isn’t it? I don’t know the woman; it can’t be merely her credibility. And it certainly can’t be that farce of a trial, with its pitiful evidence. Dumbledore put all that on simply so he could later say ‘I told you so,’ I’m sure. Or maybe he thought it would be useful to plant seeds of doubt. But in my case, it was unnecessary. You see, I already know that Lord Voldemort is alive, in some way. Or at least that he was, as recently as a year ago.”

Hermione, not sure whether to be fascinated or afraid, sat very still. Rosemary’s rheumy eyes were gazing off into the middle distance as though she had all but forgotten who she was speaking to, and Hermione worried that if she said or did something to break the spell, Rosemary would stop talking. And whatever emotions were rushing through her head, Hermione knew that she was, above all, near desperate to hear what Rosemary was about to tell her.

“I was close with my husband’s favorite nephew, Orion Black. The whole family was mad for the boy. Of course, he was the heir, and the Blacks are infatuated with their family heirs, even for Purebloods. But also, he was enigmatic, that boy. Beautiful, too, and sharp and tough without being unkind. An anomaly in my husband’s family, that lack of cruelty, but he still had so much strength that it didn’t hold him back. We hovered over him every chance we got, and on that first holiday weekend home from school he brought a friend. A quiet, dark-eyed boy as beautiful as Orion, and with none of his exuberance. This boy would grow up to be Lord Voldemort.”

Hermione wasn’t sure how to react. Of course she knew Voldemort had been a person, once, which meant he had also been a child. But his personal history was not one that she had ever been told, or thought to wonder about; did people know this, she thought? If they did, why hadn’t she? She struggled to suppress all the nervous energy she felt humming in her body so that she could commit Rosemary’s ever word carefully to memory.

Rosemary gave Hermione a brief, but very thoughtful look. “Miss Granger. I do not believe in treating children like fools simply because they are children. Most people _are_ fools, without respect to their age, and fools I do not tolerate beyond what I am compelled to. You are not a fool, that much is clear to me. Which is how I can be sure that you will trust what I tell you. You should be very careful. The child that I knew is gone, but what he became – well, I was acquainted with the dark lord as well. And things will go very badly for a Muggleborn child like you should he rise again.”

“Go on,” she added, sounding very tired. “Go visit the library and research something for me. Any topic will do. What do they call it, an ‘independent study’, isn’t it?”

Hermione hesitated for a long moment, then nodded and slipped to her feet, her hands feeling clammy where she had been gripping the seat of her chair.

When the child was gone, Rosemary Longbottom Black Redington continued to roam through her memories. Of course, there was so much more to Rosemary’s story of that special boy and the beast he would later be. Speaking of that time to the girl, even in vague terms, seemed to breathe new life into those years so long past. Rosemary had once sat across this same desk in this same office from Tom Riddle himself, when he was fourteen and furious about something he would tell her nothing about. She had told him then, as gently as she was able, that he could always turn to her for help. That if he needed her, he could send a message and she would come.

He had looked at her with a blank stare he sometimes had when he was unwilling to express something that could be perceived as a weakness, but trusted her to muddle through on her own. And she had thought in that moment how impossible it would ever be for him to sit at a desk and write a letter asking for help, no matter how badly he needed it. To need help was weak, to him. He wouldn’t bear it.

“If that time were ever to come,” Rosemary had said, slowly and carefully, “it might be that you require a message that could not be intercepted. A code." It sounded right, when she said it. He was far too smart to ever fool himself, of course, but he might be able to do this, to ask without asking. "Maybe a line of poetry with a literal meaning apart from the one that you and I have granted it. A favorite poem of mine is the New Willow; do you know it?”

For almost a minute, Tom said nothing. The room had gone still, the way it did when he was angry, as though the particles of the air and the stone in the walls were holding their breath, braced for the violent potential of his temper. Slowly, eventually the energy in the room receded to a bearable level. Tom blinked, and glanced to one side; Rosemary realized their eyes had been locked that entire time, and she had not blinked or moved a muscle. The relief when he looked away made her tremble. Even then, so aware of the danger, she had loved him, and only wished to help him however she might.

“I know it,” he had said, in a rough whisper, and stood and left the room.

There were times Rosemary was sure that the boy had needed her; at Hogwarts, as a young man, as a young lord and then, near the desperate end. But he had never asked, though she had seen him regularly until he came of age. She and Phineas treated him like a ward though he was never that, not officially. Tom spent his school holidays with them rather often, and when he went out into the world, he and Rosemary exchanged letters and had visits more often than some of her friends saw their true sons. From this rather distant vantage point (though she was closer to him than, she suspected, nearly anyone else) Rosemary could see a young man struggling violently against a powerful force. She was sure he needed her, and she would have come, but he didn't call.

When he called himself Voldemort and began to ascend, still he would sometimes appear in Rosemary’s library, late at night, and they would drink tea by the fire and speak of nothing, or if they spoke, they did so on no topic of consequence. He began wearing a cowled hood in the years after that, when fewer and fewer living souls knew that he had once been only Tom, but for some time Rosemary could still see his hands, ageless and familiar and, once, with a visible gleam of fresh blood beneath his fingernails. That was before he stopped taking tea, or speaking at all; but even then Rosemary would sit at a certain distance and give him her silent company, sometimes for hours. Rosemary told no one of this, not even Phineas, between his deaths. In those months before Voldemort was gone, taking with him whatever scrap of Tom occasionally led him to Rosemary’s fireside, he surely needed her. And she would have come, then, too, in some way; even though her fear had grown vast, it could not eclipse her stubborn love.

No, it wasn’t until the previous spring that an unfamiliar owl – rented, by its look, left an unremarkable scroll of parchment on Rosemary’s desk one morning. With the Wizengamot in recess, she was home and receiving little mail. She had opened it curiously while searching her robe pocket for her reading glasses, already frowning at the sight of only three lines on the page.

When she had her glasses in place and the words came into focus, her mind went wholly blank.

_we, as the trees, cannot ignore_

_this shaking and bending wind,_

_which we knew naught before_

Rosemary knew the stanza by heart; she reread the collection on occasion, and always spent extra time on the battered page bearing this, her once-favorite poem. But her heart was hammering, not to be trusted. She fumbled to her feet and grasped the edge of her desk to lever herself up, went to the book case by the window where she kept all her favorites. Found the spine of that oft-handled volume, carried it back, measuring her steps. If she had another bad fall, the house elves would finally force her to carry that cane.

At the desk, she waited a long moment before she turned to the fateful page, and read the entire poem twice where it rested innocently beneath its title, _the New Willow._

Tom was somewhere, still; and here, after fifty years, was his plea for her help.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t that Gilderoy didn’t like Harry Potter.

Well, he didn’t like him. But Gilderoy rarely liked anyone, so his lack of fondness for the child was nothing out of the ordinary.

Yet he was not ambivalent about the boy – he found himself, seeing the child file into the classroom, grinding his teeth. A terrible, destructive habit he had thought he had shaken off for good. And it wasn’t that he disliked the child, he _resented_ him. And not because he was more famous (yes, Gilderoy could admit it, sourly, in the privacy of his own mind: _more famous_ ) than Gilderoy, but because he was doing nothing to capitalize on it. He was squandering something that Gilderoy had worked so hard to earn, and it was very difficult to watch.

Gilderoy had considered developing a curriculum for his DADA classes, but in truth he hadn’t had the time. He was a good storyteller, and from reviewing other professors’ notes, the children would be dangerously unprepared for any practical work, anyway, so he mostly got by on regaling them with anecdotes from his books. He quizzed them occasionally on their reading, but made the scores count for so little that no one could really resent him for it, and it helped him identify the most sincere fans in his audience. In short, he made the class easy for himself and for the students, which none of them should have minded, except the most rabid Ravenclaws and perhaps a principled Gryffindor or two.

Yet _Harry Potter_ , that ungrateful, undeserving superstar, watched Gilderoy with a flame of discontent in his green eyes, though he was perpetually polite. In retaliation, Gilderoy tormented him by volunteering him for reenactments and doing the inter-celebrity-elbow-and-wink routine that really seemed to get under the child’s skin. But instead of satisfied, it all left Gilderoy feeling a little hollow.

Sometimes in the evenings he would look over the chaos that was the curriculum notes and records of six years of terrible hiring (really, Dumbledore) and halfhearted teaching (a streak Gilderoy himself was doing nothing to interrupt), and at those times Gilderoy would think about building a seven-year curriculum from the ground up. He could consult the teachers at other schools, the academics on the subject of DADA, the Auror department and every veteran he knew. _Gilderoy Lockhart has broken the Hogwarts DADA Professor Curse,_ the people would sigh. _He’s set aside his life of adventure for the good of the children_.

But then he would decide to get drunk and write letters to his favorite friends and his favorite exes instead. Usually he sobered up before he had the opportunity to actually owl them, but not always. As a result he often received very confusing responses from the recipients. One of these arrived one morning while he was having breakfast in the Great Hall, his hangover artfully concealed with a combination of potions, glamours, and muggle cosmetics. He knew the owl right away; the magnificent snowy owl with black barring on his wings that Gilderoy had always found quite glamorous, though now he found it gaudy on principle since Harry Potter had a snowy owl, too.

Still, he always enjoyed getting post from Arabella Greengrass, who was, in the privacy of Gilderoy’s own mind, his best friend. He couldn’t tell _her_ that, of course, he mused as he opened the letter and smoothed it out on the table between his teacup and fruit plate. It would go directly to her beautiful head, and give her something to lord over him, and he didn’t…

_To my dearest friend Gilderoy, who to my honor has bestowed upon me the title of “best friend,” as of the date of his owl post, this 9 th day of November, in the year 1992:_

“Bloody woman,” Gilderoy muttered, pinching his nose and feeling the sharpest points of his headache straining against the protection of his Pepper Up-and-Quigley’s Cureall-cocktail. He reluctantly read on.

_While I had always trusted in my innate ability to draw into my orbit all the finest witches and wizards of today’s age, I had not realized that I could also compel the attendance of one who once described himself as “immune to the ordinary human inclinations of friendship and reciprocity.” Of course at the time of that statement you were at the end of your relationship with that Quidditch-playing what’s-his-name, and nursing hurt feelings not over the relationship’s end, of course, but rather the absurd claim by said what-his-name that he had concluded the association, when everyone with a basic reading ability knows that no one has every voluntarily terminated a relationship with Gilderoy Lockhart, keeper of Witch Weekly’s favorite smile._

Gilderoy rubbed his fingers against his temples until his scalp tingled and rolled the letter up, nose in the air. That was the last time he corresponded with _her_ , he thought, taking a sip of his tea and tapping his toe, trying to decide whether to incinerate the letter with a spell or feed it slowly into the roaring flames of his fireplace; the latter course felt like the time-honored choice.

After a few moments he set his teacup down and unrolled the parchment, found his place and read on.

_Now that you’ve had your fit, let me confess that I, too, hold you as my dearest friend. You have my permission to keep this exciting, written evidence of my regard for you among your other cherished keepsakes, but heed me: should it ever fall into the wrong hands and be used against me, trust that I have your own written declaration on hand. “Mutually assured destruction,” the fine old saying goes. Though I’m told the muggles have tried to take credit for it, my grandfather says its origins date back to the ancient tradition of taming and training dragons among wizarding families in the early feudal period._

_The attitude of your letter, as well as the unsightly spots of ink, evidence of dried tears and strong smell of whiskey, all lead me to the conclusion I should visit immediately. What is your availability this Saturday afternoon, and what are the least primitive lodgings to be found in that charming hamlet, Hogsmeade?_

_w/ love,_

_Ari_

Gilderoy frowned uncertainly at the letter for a while, until the cacophony of voices and screeching benches broke his reverie. The children were getting up, which meant that some of them were headed toward his classroom and he was expected to get there first. He would write Arabella later. Maybe. He hadn’t decided if she was forgiven yet.

That Saturday afternoon, Gilderoy arrived a half hour late and was gratified to find Arabella Greengrass already waiting on him in the little tea room that no one went to, called Madam Adieu’s, and trying too hard to be French and posh. The woman was effortlessly lovely, as always; the Greengrasses rivaled the Malfoys for being frustratingly beautiful people to a name, as well as shamelessly hedonistic. Arabella was wearing some sort of pale pink robes with gauzy hems that seemed to move and float like a frothy bubble bath. Above the voluminous skirt, the bodice was sleek and simple, so as not to detract from Ari’s unpainted face and the loose soft ringlets of her chestnut hair. Seeing him, she rose; they were almost of a height. Her small smile was teasing and warm as they kissed the air around each other’s cheeks, and she watched him as she sat back down and Gilderoy sniffed and smoothed his robes before taking his chair as well.

“Don’t pretend you don’t like to be teased, my dear,” Ari murmured in her low voice, clearly amused, but also fond. Gilderoy supposed he could forgive her for constantly laughing at his expense. It was the penchant of best friends, according to some.

“There is teasing to tease, and there is easing to wound,” he said, more stiffly than he’d meant to, and Ari went still. Her expression cleared to one of sincere concern.

“Oh, darling. Are things really that bad?”

Gilderoy opened and closed his mouth a couple times, appalled that he could _truly_ be so _emotionally vulnerable_ as to behave like an _asphyxiated fish_ …and then, with a last desperate glance around the tea room to ensure that it was still empty save for they two, he burst into tears.

After a moment spent alarmed and motionless, Ari sprang into action. She incanted a silencing charm, added an impressive and non-verbal notice-me-not, then set down her wand and relocated her chair so that she could press up against Gilderoy’s side, slide a willowy arm around his shoulders, and press his wet face into the soft, fragrant refuge of her hair.

“Hush, now,” she said soothingly. “Merlin, Gil. I could have told you that even three months in Scotland would drive any sophisticate to despair. There is no _society_ at all.”

Her arch tone helped him regain his composure as nothing else could, and by the time Gilderoy lifted his head from her shoulder, she had conjured a silk handkerchief for him and handed it to him, businesslike, nodding in satisfaction when he blew his nose. She vanished the handkerchief and handed him a glass of water, tutting when he made a face. He rolled his eyes and drank it.

“I have had a letter or two from little Daphne. She tells me you’re marvelous.”

Gilderoy tried to muster the energy to preen, but all he could manage was a faint smile. “Lovely girl. Looks a bit like you.” Gilderoy had once seen the girl draw GL + DG inside a crooked heart in the margin of her notes.

“Takes after her mother, rather,” Ari said. “Her little sister has more the look of a Greengrass, or at least, I’m told she’s the prettier one, and the picture of her cousin Arabella at the same age.” She winked at Gilderoy like a lovely, amused owl, and he found that his smile was coming a little easier. Maybe she’d put something in the water she’d forced down him; Greengrasses had a host of secret family potions that they were inclined to toss into the food and drink of their nearest and dearest with generally benevolent intentions.

“Most of them think I’m marvelous,” Gilderoy said. “They’re easy to dazzle.”

“Spoken like a natural dazzler.” Ari grinned.

“Takes one to know one,” Gilderoy volleyed, feeling magnanimous. Arabella Greengrass probably hadn’t blushed since the earliest days of puberty, but her smile just then was sincere and pleased.

“I wasn’t sure about the position, you know,” Gilderoy said, because he was well aware Arabella _had_ known, though he had made every effort to project confidence when he had announced his hiring to a group of their friends at a favorite wine bar in the wizarding district in Niece, early in the summer.

“Mmm,” Arabella said. “It is a prestigious position, to be sure. Especially for someone as young as you.”

“The possessed one was younger,” Gilderoy snorted. “Unless you count the possessor, I suppose. Would one average their ages?”

Arabella sat up straighter, ignoring his joke in favor of the deeper implication. “So you believe Dumbledore about all that? From what I read about the trial, it was a sideshow. Hardly enough evidence for the investigators to claim good faith in leveling the charges.”

“Nothing else makes sense. Dumbledore has crafted his reputation as carefully as anyone in the world’s history. He knows it will play out to make him a prophet, not a mad man or, worse, a liar.”

They sat in silence while Arabella blinked in shock. But she wasn’t one to be left quaking and speechless; she absorbed, assimilated, and sat back in her chair, and in all of three seconds she was evaluating a much-changed landscape with a strategist’s eye.

“Greengrasses are always neutral,” she said, not sounding particularly happy about that fact. “Gilderoy Lockhart, pureblood but without the burdens of a noble family to weigh him down, can decide his allegiance all for himself.”

“Neutrality has served you well,” Gilderoy noted, approvingly. “Also, less messy.”

Arabella’s perfectly-groomed eyebrows arched. “Hardly. Every angle of politics is messy. If the dark lord had been successful, I am sure we would have been punished – subtly, but still – for some perceived cowardice. And even as things are, the war was a political setback. The victors emerge knitted tightly together, every time. It can take generations to break their ranks.”

Gilderoy contemplated all this, imagining a thousand potential futures and his place within them. “What is the landscape like, would you say, if he should attempt to ascend again?”

“Still unchanged, largely,” Ari said grimly. “Of course the handful of the notorious are safely stored in Azkaban – the Lestranges, and that terrible werewolf – but many of them walk free, and still relatively empowered. His most effective supporters were the inner six, of course, and their descendants – or what’s left of them – can never fill the same role. Maybe without that platform, he wouldn’t gain traction at all. And according to Dumbledore and Lily Potter he’s – what? Some breed of ghost? My great grandfather said the dark lord in his prime was equal parts charismatic and terrible, beautiful and powerful. Now he’s only terrible.”

“There is no power quite like fear,” Gilderoy said faintly. He frowned at his empty teacup, ready to criticize the service, then remembered that all of Ari’s spells were still in place and they were so strong the waitress probably didn’t even realize they were still there.

At some point, Ari had begun to hold his hand. She squeezed it now. There was nothing to say to that, except to make a joke about the inutility of speaking the obvious. And Ari was clearly not in the mood for jokes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second chapter I've posted today, for anyone who might have missed Chapter 6. Not that I think there would be any real issue reading them out of order.

Many years later, from an adult’s perspective, Harry would marvel that he had been so easily seduced by Tom Riddle’s diary. But then he had recognized that the circumstances were very specific, and with even a minor adjustment, everything might have been different. The siren’s call of the Horcrux could forgive his early fascination, but even at twelve years old, Harry knew enough about magic to recognize that there was something nefarious about the diary. Even if the book hadn’t said what it had about the Diarist’s Copy Method, how many times had his mother mentioned that seemingly-sentient objects were generally the darkest of dark artefacts, a dangerous challenge even for a trained expert like her?

But Harry was fundamentally lonely. He had never been a person who needed to be somewhat close to many people, but he was a person who needed to be very close to at least one person. He wasn’t meant to be adrift without a confidante, and a summer apart had left him and Blaise friendly but shy. In the post-ritual-induced closeness, he, Neville, Ron and Mason were inseparable, but the natural barriers of their separate houses had somehow been erected once more.

And there was something about being able to say anything, in absolute confidence but with the promise of a sympathetic and insightful reply, that was deeply alluring. And would have been to anyone, Harry would later think, let alone a kid who was hunted by a believed-dead wizard so dark that even those who were certain he was gone refused to speak his name.

In the present, Harry was firmly in denial as to the considerable risk he was taking. He did cast protective spells on himself when he handled the diary, in deference to the thought of his mother and how thoroughly furious and disappointed his actions would be sure to make her, and then he picked up a quill with his protected hands and promptly bared his soul to the shard of Tom Riddle spelled into the diary’s empty pages, evening after evening.

“Do you know where you were, before I began writing to you, or who you were with?” Harry wrote one night, curtains drawn and reading and writing by the light of _lumos._

“I am not conscious of what surrounds the diary. But I have been written to before.”

“Can you tell me? Or is keeping their names private part of the spell?”

“No. The spells that created this object were intended to preserve my memories and allow the writer to experience those memories through conversation. The spells didn’t intend that the diary would be used in the traditional manner by the writer, so the writer’s secrecy wouldn’t have occurred to the spellmaker who created the method.”

“Then _will_ you tell me?”

“Why does it matter? Not jealous, are you?”

Inexplicably, Harry blushed. After a moment, he wrote, “That’s stupid. Of course not. I just wondered…sometimes I think I stole you. And I wonder if you feel that way.”

“I am not the diary. I am the effect of a spell interacting with the memories that were stored inside the diary. I do not think I can be stolen.”

Harry was fascinated by this definition of a “self,” an “I.”

On another evening, weeks later, Harry wondered, “What do you feel when you aren’t writing to me?”

“I do not perceive a passage of time. For me, there is no delay between the times when you write. I do not have the opportunity to ‘feel’ anything during those periods.”

They had just spent nearly an hour in one of Tom’s memories, as they did more and more often. But Harry had noticed that the longer they spent in a memory, the harder it was for Harry to get out of bed the next morning. Harry asked Tom if that was a normal result of the spell, and Tom said he didn’t know. It was the first time he doubted Tom’s honesty, and after that he seemed to doubt every other thing Tom wrote. Instead of repelling him, however, his doubt and suspicion made him more obsessed than ever. He was short-tempered from lack of sleep, bleary-eyed and impatient with his friends. His mother’s letters began to remark on the brevity of his messages, and it all culminated, to Harry’s dismay, with a summons to Professor Snape’s office.

Professor Snape sat in his chair with such extreme rigidity it was almost comical. Harry had no idea why he had been brought there, but it struck him that Professor Snape was even more unhappy about their meeting with Harry.

“As your head of House,” the Professor began, at length, “I am, to an extent, responsible for ensuring your physical and…emotional…well-being. If a Slytherin parent has concerns about a Slytherin student, they often ask me to…evaluate…their child, or, ah, ensure such student is aware of my role as a source of support and. Guidance.”

The speech was so halting it was almost incoherent, a stark contrast to the way Professor Snape waxed poetic about brewing techniques at the front of the classroom, or rattled off strings of three-syllable words on the inability of school children to adequately perform the most basic of work. Although Harry had thought, even in his distracted state, that the potions class room was less miserable this year than he remembered it. He wasn’t the only one to comment on Professor Snape’s infamously cutting wit seeming somewhat dulled. Three Hufflepuff girls even insisted that, coming upon their Professor unsuspecting, when they were much earlier than usual to class and he thought himself alone, they had observed the Potions Master to be _humming_ and _smiling_. Of course, both of these human behaviors had immediately ceased when he took notice of them, scowled, and took three points from Hufflepuff for no apparent reason at all. The girls were too dumbstruck to argue.

“I’m, er, aware of it. Your role, that is. Sir.” Harry eyed his Professor cautiously while the wizard looked anywhere but at Harry.

“Your behavior in the classroom has changed,” Professor Snape said, gaze hovering somewhere beyond Harry’s right ear, “some would say for the worse. Although I can appreciate silence, other teachers prefer a more active participant.”

Harry nodded, noncommittal. Professor Snape finally glanced directly at his face, scowled, and looked away again. A suspicion began to take shape in Harry’s mind. “So, my mother has told you she’s worried about me, then?”

A deep red flush was creeping up Snape’s throat like a spell. Harry was fascinated. “She said you two were old friends,” he added, experimentally, and surely enough the wash of redness picked up speed, and by the time Professor Snape spoke again, he was red to his hairline and the tips of his ears.

“She has written to me in my capacity as your head of House,” he said, once again staring resolutely at the walls. “The other observations are my own, confirmed by your other professors.”

It shouldn’t have surprised Harry that Professor Snape was blushing about his mother. Lily Evans Potter had that effect on other people. Even Harry had observed it, and he was generally oblivious to those sorts of things – partly attributable to his age and mostly attributable to his personality. He wasn’t sure whether the realization made him want to laugh or scowl.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well,” Harry said, settling for selective honesty. “I have nightmares.” Also true. “And I’m worried about my mom.” A little more truth than he’d planned to share. Harry looked down at his lap and swallowed.

“Mr. Potter,” said Professor Snape, in the same voice he used in class. He hesitated, then, and said in a slightly different tone, “Harry.”

Startled, Harry looked up. Professor Snape was looking at him directly, and while he wasn’t blushing anymore, there was something strange about his face. His expression was, if not soft, without its usual hard mask, either. “Like boggarts, nightmares flourish in dark cupboards. They are best dispelled by the open air, and confrontation. Talk to someone. I would not think that ‘someone’ is likely to be me, but.” He cleared his throat, and looked away again. “I am available. If you cannot come up with anyone else.”

This was…Professor Snape, being nice, Harry realized, faintly. It was only when his professor shot him a sharp look that Harry realized he had not said anything yet, and several seconds had ticked past.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll remember that.”

So that evening, Harry told Tom that he had nightmares. About a high voice, his father pleading for mercy, and the bright green flash of _Avada Kedavra_.

“A dark lord killed your father, you said,” wrote Tom. “Do you mean Grindelwald?”

“No,” Harry wrote. “The dark lord called Voldemort.”

Tom never lingered in a reply. He always began writing immediately, as though his responses required no thought at all. But this time the page in front of Harry absorbed the ink from Harry’s message and then remained blank. He turned a few pages, stroked the leather cover, as though he might coax a reply from the spellwork, and nothing happened. Eventually Harry went to bed, and it wasn’t until the morning that he checked the diary again, barely realizing he’d slept deeply and dreamlessly and felt better than he had in weeks. Tom had replied.

“Voldemort, you say? Maybe it would help for you to tell me about him. I always said that nightmares are like boggarts, and fester if left in closed cupboards.”

This time it was Harry who was left unable to compose an immediate response. IT wasn’t until lunch time that he had convinced himself not to be so uneasy. Coincidences happen – and he was practically raised as a muggle, by a muggleborn mother. Maybe the nightmare and boggart line was a wizarding figure of speech he just hadn’t heard before. But just in case it wasn’t, Harry carefully didn’t ask anyone about it, a deeply-buried part of him sure he would rather not know.

***

Three days before the Christmas holidays, Severus walked through the floo at 12 Grimmauld Place, badly startling Kreacher. When Lily arrived in the floo foyer, Severus had both his hands raised and was slowly backing away from the wizened elf, who was snarling and wielding a brass poker with evident lethal intent.

“Kreacher,” Lily said sharply. She didn’t like to shout at Kreacher, but she found the nastier she was to him, the calmer he grew. His ears flattened and he didn’t look away from Severus, though he stopped waving the poker.

“Mrs. Potter,” Kreacher managed; he hated addressing her, because Sirius had forbade him to call her anything other than “Mrs. Potter,” which wouldn’t have been Lily’s choice of a title, but she did appreciate limiting the elf’s creative license. One could only suffer being called a “mudblood seductress” or “muggle-spawned whore” with good humor for a limited period of time. “This intruder upon the noble and most ancient house of Black was not invited.”

“No,” Lily said evenly, “but he is welcome, Kreacher. Stand aside, and fetch us the tea things.”

With a truly murderous glare in her direction – Sirius could not well-regulate non-verbal communication with verbal instructions, as it turned out – Kreacher shuffled from the room, muttering the entire way at a tone that was fortunately just inaudible. Severus dusted a fine layer of ash from his robes that must have originated on his end. Lily knew Kreacher had just finished cleaning Grimmauld Place’s floo, though she wondered if Severus might have preferred dirtier robes to his encounter with the elf.

Lily hadn’t been sure how to greet Severus, but when he cast her an uncertain stare around the curtain of his hair, eyes darker than ever, she smiled and went to him, slid her arms around his waist and leaned against his chest. She felt a sigh leave him, and one large hand on the small of her back while the other rested on the back of her head. The warmth of his breath when he kissed her on her crown, stirring the hair there. It had been two weeks since she had seen him; she had stayed away, deliberately abstained, for reasons that now seemed ridiculous. They wrote regularly, but their emotional - and physical – intimacy was not spoken nor written of between them. During periods of separation, reading and sending letters as she would to a platonic friend, the memories of his body were increasingly surreal. Two weeks wasn’t the longest they’d gone apart, but it was close, and Lily had to admit to herself that she didn’t like it. What she could do with that knowledge, she couldn’t yet say.

“I’ve been thinking about your trip, after the holidays,” Severus said against her hair. “I’ve decided to go.”

Startled, Lily drew back, blinked up at him. “What?”

“I have said, repeatedly, that you shouldn’t go alone, and you have said, repeatedly, that Black shouldn’t go and Lupin won’t. So I have decided that I shall go.”

“You can’t,” Lily said flatly. “You have to work.”

“Professors take sabbaticals,” Severus said dismissively.

“You’re a head of house,” Lily protested.

“Slughorn hates retirement. He’s always harassing me about filling in. He was a head of house too.”

“He was terrible. You’ve said he was terrible!”

“Perhaps the students will have an extra appreciation for me when I get back.”

Lily glared at him, not sure why she had such a strong urge to argue with him. “How long has it been since you were in any physical danger? It isn’t like riding a bicycle. The ability to battle leaves you as time passes.”

“I have never heard anyone say that before. But I have also never ridden a bicycle.”

“You,” Lily said, and bit her lip. “I don’t know how to react. It is always just me. I don’t want to have to worry about anyone else.”

“I can take care of myself,” Severus assured her, and for a few moments they glared at one another, then Lily looked away.

“I…”

The floo came alive, and Remus’s disembodied voice called, “Lily, we’re coming through,” just before a characteristically unkempt-looking Zack leapt out of the flames and landed more nimbly than Harry ever did on the far side of the hearth. He was studying sizing Severus up with a curious blue gaze when Remus appeared and, seeing Severus, cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Ah, Severus. Nice to see you. This is my son, Zack. Zack, this is Professor Snape. Next year he will be teaching you potions at Hogwarts.”

Zack perked up, though Lily flinched, internally. She had thought it tactless for Sirius and Remus to treat Hogwarts as a foregone conclusion in Zack’s case. They all knew that acceptance letters for werewolves had a habit of getting lost in transit.

Zack had perked up at the introduction, sticking out a small hand smeared with some kind of food residue. Lily watched Severus’s face form a look of horror with badly concealed delight while Remus’s ears went red again.

Very gingerly, Severus accepted the proffered hand, and Zack shook their arms up and down a few times before losing interest and darting over to hug Lily. She had a momentary impression of his small, wiry body against her right hip before he was off again, bouncing around Remus impatiently. It seemed inappropriate, even internally, to compare him to a puppy, but…

“Pixies,” Remus explained to the room, and let Zack tow him upstairs, shooting Lily a quick, mute apology over his shoulder.

“Zack is supposed to write a primary school paper about magical creatures. He’ll take any excuse to poke around the pixie hive in the attic,” Lily told Severus, while he was studying his hand for irregularities. She wasn’t sure whether it was because he had to shake hands with a dirty child, or because he had to shake hands with a werewolf. The latter thought made her blood run cold, and it was reflected in her cool tone. “He’s only a child, Severus.”

Severus looked at her and frowned. “He was _sticky_.”

Awash with relief and affection, Lily laughed. “Perhaps a bath is in order.” She stalked closer and ran her hands down his waist, over his hips. Severus eased closer automatically, still holding his right hand out as though it was contaminated. Lily rolled her eyes, then couldn’t help a swift  _scourgify_ ; as always, when she did something wandless and wordless, Severus was made instantly handsy, though she saw he was stealing a look toward the staircase.

“They’ll be hours, but if you’d be more comfortable…” she grasped him more tightly and apparated to the bedroom she’d made hers on the second floor.

A few minutes later, well into those activities they neither spoke nor wrote about, Severus lifted his head. “You think you’ve distracted me.”

Lily lifted her head from the pillow and glared down her body at him. “Are you saying,” she managed after a moment, “that I haven’t?”

“You think you can make me drop it,” Severus amended. These were the moments when he was most at ease; almost playful, and hardest to resist.

“I think I will drop you,” Lily said, rather nonsensically, “if you don’t...” She let her head fall back again, her hands encouraging in Severus’s hair. His hair was silky, so long she could easily grab it in handfuls and tug.

“I will,” he promised, stroking her hip, “but I want you to agree that I will go.”

It was manipulation of the worst kind, Lily thought, but in that moment she wanted him with her. With her there in bed, and with her on a trek into the wilderness to hunt down a monster. She wanted him with her, possibly, in other ways too. Lily didn’t know what to do with what she knew that she wanted, except, most immediately, to say, “Yes.”

Lily shouldn’t have been able to feel Severus smiling when he nuzzled her thigh before attending to more pressing matters, but she was sure she did.

***

Hermione, Draco and Lavender met in secret every Tuesday in the empty classroom everyone seemed to have forgotten about in the Astronomy Tower stairwell. Lavender knew about it; she had ingratiated herself with the fifth-year Gryffindor girls and apparently some of them used it as a secret place to snog boys. That made the entire room seem vaguely unsanitary to Hermione, but she trudged up the stairs every week at the appointed time, anyway, and somehow no matter how annoyed she was on arrival, everything negative fled her mind immediately when she slipped into the room to greetings from Draco and Lav.

She knew the only reason for the secrecy was Draco not wanting to be seen with Hermione, and that Lavender participated in the intrigue in solidarity. Draco even turned his nose up at Lavender, a pureblood if a Gryffindor, in the same manner he did Hermione, when they passed in the halls. Hermione let herself believe that Draco did all of this because of his father and a select few other poisonous families, but sometimes she had her doubts.

“Your hair is looking lovely, Hermione,” Lavender murmured, ignoring Hermione’s alarm at having Lavender run her hands over Hermione’s hair, smoothed into loose ringlets by the special potion that Lavender had given her for her birthday. Hermione was new to having friends and very new to having a friend like Lavender, who was already skilled with lipstick, and glitter, and the potions and spells necessary for perpetually shiny and arranged hair.

Draco possessed many of these same skills, but he was less enthusiastic about them. That being said, he did smile approvingly at Lavender’s praise, hugged Hermione, and then threw himself down in a chair where he calmly inspected his fingernails until Lavender had exhausted the topic.

When the girls were quiet, Draco tipped his head back to smile up at them. “Lav, how was your apprenticeship this week?”

Lavender was the only one from their first-year rituals team to use her prize of a choice of internships outside the Ministry. She had spent the last summer and would spend the next as well in the Magical Fashions Institute, ferried from one department to another.

“I spent my hour fetching tea,” she admitted wryly. “They don’t know what to do with me for such a short time, but at least they won’t forget about me before the summer.”

Draco made a sympathetic face. “I think my ‘mentor’ forgets me every time, no more than an hour after I leave. He seems surprised every time I show up, even though I take care to be only five minutes early. Practically late, according to my father. Hermione, what about you? We know Scary Mary adores you in her way.”

“Don’t call her that,” Hermione said mildly, sitting next to Draco in the oversized chair. Ever since Rosemary had told Hermione that little bit - less than nothing, really, of her knowledge of the dark lord - Hermione had felt uncomfortable around the old witch. She knew witches lived a long time; she knew Rosemary herself was over a hundred and fifty years old. Simple math could have revealed that Rosemary had been an adult during the rise of not one, but two dark lords. Hearing about it, even in general terms, felt very different, though.

“It’s been fine. She’s having me do an independent study on the legal status of magical creatures.”

“For or against?” Lavender asked. “Anything on werewolves?”

Hermione shrugged. “House elves, so far,” she admitted, but didn’t mention that Hermione’s topic had been Hermione’s invention. She didn’t know very much about werewolves, but the house elf situation had made her uncomfortable since the first time their plight was described to her in cheerful terms by the girl sitting next to her at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall. _Oh, elf magic puts the food on the plates. What are elves? Oh, muggleborn I see. I don’t have a problem with that, not like some people, you know…house elves belong to families and institutions and cook and clean up and look after children and gardens. Really anything you ask and don’t want to do yourself. Pay them? Merlin, no. I said they_ belong _to families and institutions. Slavery? Oh yes, I suppose it’s like that. They’re quite happy to do it, though._

Hermione almost rolled her eyes again at the memory.

“I would have thought werewolves, what with Jerome Travers’s platform. Pretty shocking stuff, really.”

Draco made a face. “I never liked a Travers. When my father had a few of them to dinner once, they confused the salad forks with the beverage spears, and then all the senior cutlery was forced to duel. We all went hungry; it was terrible.”

Hermione didn’t always feel the cultural distance between herself and Draco so acutely, but she certainly did in that moment. She’d only understood about a third of what he’d said, if that much.

“Anyway,” Lavender continued, with a prim look at Draco for his interjection, “according to my mother’s letters, it’s even worse than what the _Daily Prophet_ is willing to print. He wants the werewolves collared and registered, like dogs.”

Hermione didn’t know much about werewolves, but she _did_ know enough for that mental image to make her a little ill. “But they’re just people, aren’t they, except for during the full moon itself?”

Lavender shrugged, coloring a little. “I don’t know. I don’t know a werewolf.”

“That you know of,” Draco said. “I hear there are thousands of them passing as witches and wizards.”

Hermione wasn’t completely comfortable with the way Draco said “them,” but she bit her tongue for now. “It sounds like a blood issue, so Rosemary probably won’t weigh in on it unless she’s forced.”

“I don’t think it can possibly come to that,” Lavender said. “He’s much too hateful to be taken seriously. But some of the other candidates are trying to come out ‘pro-werewolf,’ if you could call it that, just to set themselves apart.”

Hermione hadn’t been paying very much attention to the Ministry elections. The politics were impenetrable for her, having as she did so little background knowledge of the issues and concerns of wizarding Britain. She had been trying to keep her cultural education to small and digestible lessons. Which reminded her… “Draco, what on earth is a beverage spear?”

He looked much more shocked than he had any right to be. “Merlin, Granger, you mean muggles don’t even use a _beverage spear_? How else can you stun and pierce the sugared snoraflu in your second water glass – _bare handed_ , like some sort of _barbarian_?”

“Draco, love,” Lavender said, petting him. “I don’t believe muggles fish live animals out of their water glasses and eat them. I actually think that’s more of a Sacred 28 sort of thing, since I also have absolutely no idea what in Merlin’s name you’re on about.”

Draco looked back and forth between the two of them, scandalized, then collapsed back into his chair. “Are you two pulling my leg?”

Hermione and Lavender looked at one another, and they both shook their heads. “Why on earth would anyone want to…do what you just described?” Hermione had a hard time even eating a whole creature, such as a fish or even a shrimp. It was so much harder to pretend that she was just eating an especially delicious plant, rather than something that had once had thoughts and a face.

“Talk to me after you’ve tried a snoraflu,” Draco assured her. “Maybe I’ll have mummy tell the elves to prepare them when you come to the manor over the holidays. You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Hermione told her secret best friend. “Have I ever managed to tell you no?”


	8. Chapter 8

_December 1992_

“Wizarding culture is all about doing whatever you want, so long as no one else knows about it,” Draco explained calmly. “And then, of course, people might _know_ about it, but they will pretend not to, within reason.”

Hermione blinked, although this explanation did something to explain why Draco’s parents had forbidden their friendship, and yet she had just passed a pleasant lunch with them in their home. “Draco,” she began slowly, “if that’s true, it’s horrible.”

Draco had been brushing his hair, and now he swiveled around on the stool he was sitting on to face her. The mirror that had been hovering in front of him when his back was to her also spun about an instant later, effectively hiding his face from Hermione, until Draco batted it away impatiently, and set his brush on his knee. The mirror obediently returned to the dressing table and settled on a small stand there.

“Well, it is true. I don’t know about _horrible_ ,” Draco said, looking at her with his brows arched. “What would be _horrible_ would be _not_ being able to do what you want at _all_ , instead of just not publicly.”

Hermione shrugged unhappily. “I thought that wizarding culture was more accepting. I read a book about the Merlin era that made it sound like wizards and witches wanted to build a society that was better than what the muggles had. More accepting, liberated, all of that. Witches were considered equal to wizards from the beginning, and…”

Draco snorted. “Tell that to my mother,” he muttered. Hermione glared at him and kept speaking.

“Yet now I find that the _aristocracy_ is in better shape in wizarding Britain than it is in muggle Britain.” Hermione folded her arms and chewed on her lower lip. “If I’m so disgraceful, why isn’t Lady Mary ashamed of me?”

“Well,” Draco started, brow furrowed in contemplation. “I think that may be because at a certain age, you can do whatever you want in public, too. My father calls it ‘social currency’ and he says I’m too young to have very much to spend.”

Hermione also privately suspected that Lucius would prefer that Hermione not set foot in Malfoy Manor at all, let alone befriend its heir even in secret. She had caught, more than once, a despairing look and curled lip, quickly masked when he saw her looking. Narcissa, in contrast, was a portrait of courtesy, and had even given her husband a reproving look at least once, again when Hermione wasn’t meant to see.

Hermione had grown up in an upper middle class home with respectable parents who moved in respected social circles, attended private primary school and was the top of her class, and knew how to mind her manners. But she had not always been well received by racially white families and their classmates, who eyed her coffee complexion and frizzy ringlets with unease. She was sensitive to prejudice as a result, but she had hoped, reading about the wizarding world in the summer months between her letter and Minerva McGonagall’s personal visit and boarding the train at 9 ¾, that she wouldn’t encounter such silly close-mindedness there.

Though it wasn’t any solace, Hermione thought that Lucius’s disdain had nothing to do with the way that Hermione looked.

“Well, I do think it’s horrible,” Hermione said, staring down at her clasped hands. “And you would, too, if you were the one who had to be kept secret.”

She felt the bed she was sitting on sink a little under Draco’s weight, and then one of his hands was settling over hers. A few strands of his silky hair swung forward and brushed her shoulder. “You’re right,” he murmured. “I don’t really think about it, because for me, it’s just the way things have always been. But yes, you’re right, I haven’t ever had to be kept secret. And I…” he looked away, but his hand grasped hers, lacing their fingers together. “I haven’t ever had a friend like you, Hermione. Most of my friends are my friends because of the public part, not because they just like _me_.” Hermione looked at his averted face. His eyelashes were long, but so pale they were invisible from any greater distance. Now she could see them, lying against his pale cheek, even white teeth gently biting down on his lower lip.

Hermione felt…something. Something new. It was not unlike what she felt when she looked directly at Professor Lockhart for too long. It was also nothing like that, because it was a physical, almost painfully intense electricity that originated from where her fingers were linked with Draco’s and then traveled to every part of her body. Her scalp tingled, her toes were warm. It was baffling and horrible in its implications.

 _Oh, no,_ Hermione thought, somewhere between miserable and elated.

Later, back home and staring out her bedroom window at the twinkle of the neighbors’ Christmas lights across the street, Hermione tried to argue against the implications of that feeling. That feeling she couldn’t forget. In fact, the memory seemed to recreate a shadow of the feeling once again – her skin going hot and tight, the ghost of another hand applying firm pressure to her own – and to compound the evidence, she recalled Draco’s eyelashes in vivid detail, and then in her imagination, he looked up, grey eyes arresting in that aristocratic face, and then he leaned forward, the graceful curve of his mouth parting, and…

Hermione buried her face in her hands, mortified.

“It’s true,” she moaned out loud, flopping onto her back and staring up at the darkness of her bedroom ceiling. Her mother had once pasted glow in the dark stars there in a poor estimation of the true constellations, and her first summer back from Hogwarts, Hermione had decided she was too old for them. They had dragged out a step ladder and her mother, badly concealing her sentimental tears at Hermione’s approaching womanhood, had helped Hermione pry them off while musing that soon Hermione would be bringing boys home for the holidays.

They hadn’t gotten all the adhesive off, so there were now dark smudges where each star had been. Hermione’s father had said for weeks he would repaint the ceiling, but then they had all gotten used to it and the task was forgotten. Hermione assumed they didn’t visit her room much anymore, and she certainly wasn’t going to mention it. She was hardly there at all, and the evidence of her childhood didn’t bother her that much. In fact, just then, she wished all the stars were still there in their scientifically inaccurate glory, so that she could fall asleep under their soothing green-gold glow.

Instead she lay awake a long time, a silent mantra repeating in her mind. _It’s true. I have a crush on Draco Malfoy_.

*********

Remus was in Hogsmeade much too early, so he had a glass of something overpriced and non-alcoholic at the Hog’s Head before walking slowly toward the castle, still thirty minutes in advance of the appointed time. Remus had always been a little anxious about appointments and deadlines. Nothing could drive him out of his head quite like running late, and he was nervous enough without that added pressure. Which was why he had dropped Zack off with Lily and Harry first thing that morning, even though he didn’t need to be at Hogwarts until early afternoon. It had been easier to get through the day without Zack underfoot, he hated to admit. He adored the boy, but full time parenting had always placed Remus under a strain. He missed adult society, not to mention time with his books and quiet dinners with Sirius that preceded long and languorous lovemaking of a character they could rarely afford since becoming parents.

There would be plenty of time for that, he reminded himself, when Zack was off to Hogwarts. Just the thought made Remus’s heart seize with the prospect of how much he’d miss him. It was bad enough not seeing Harry on a weekly basis as he’d quickly grown accustomed after Lily relocated to London. Wondering after Zack day in and day out might crippled him, even if he was able to get his position back in the Department for Magical Children, a dim prospect with the way the funding seemed to be headed.

Seeing Severus again since their interlude at Grimmauld Place the other day was daunting. Not that they’d kept company before then, but they had settled into a sort of cordial, at-arms-length manner that they both had seemed at ease with. They rarely ran into one another since Severus seemed to be on voluntary house arrest within the bounds of Hogwarts, but had the uncanny habit of bumping into one another in the corridors when Remus visited Dumbledore for tea, which he tried to do every several weeks.

Normally the walk pained Remus and made him wish he had his stick, but he’d been feeling physically stronger since he and Zack began making runs periodically in the US – since that first Summit just after Christmas almost a year ago now, he had felt a profound relief at the leaps and bounds that were being made with the rituals. It was too late for Remus in some ways – he had terrifying experiences and near-misses as a child, not to mention the horror of being embedded with Fenrir for two long years – but not for Zack. Zack might never experience the horrifying lack of agency, the full descent into hunger, the crippling memories that interrupted the most innocent of waking moments for months and years afterward…

Remus swallowed and fought back these feelings as he reached the gates, shuddering as he always did at the wards. He noted with amusement the changes in the wards since Lily had enrolled Harry – one of her conditions, he recalled, that they be layered with a few modern variants. His smile faded when he recalled that even that hadn’t been enough to stop Voldemort from sneaking in, very literally guised as a teacher of all things.

Dismayed by how hard he had to keep himself from descending into the maudlin at every opportunity, Remus rubbed a hand over his sparse beard and picked up the pace toward the castle entrance, considering spending some time near the Great Lake after he met with Severus. It was a spot he associated with peace, so long as he didn’t dwell too hard on memories of Peter and James.

Severus was waiting for him, of course, with a vaguely hunted expression. Remus would have thought Severus knew that _Remus_ was hardly going to give him grief about whatever was going on with Lily. He might have suspected it of Sirius, unable to know how the fear of Lily’s wrath could keep even Padfoot out of such mischief. But while Remus wasn’t totally innocent in the more regrettable moments of their shared childhood, he had never affirmatively goaded or teased.

“Lupin,” Severus said shortly. “Thank you for being punctual.”

Remus was startled by the idea of having something in common with Severus, but obviously he did. It was still fifteen minutes before the time Severus had designated when he owled.

“Of course,” Remus murmured. “Thank you for making the time. Not just to meet me, but to…”

Severus jerked his chin in a dismissive gesture, clearly made uneasy by Remus expressing any gratitude.

“Yes, well. If you’ll follow me.”

As Severus led the way toward the dungeons, Remus couldn’t keep his thoughts from drifting toward the incredulous. He couldn’t say he had ever shared Lily’s taste in men. While Sirius had been enough to distract Remus from virtually anyone, even in a vacuum, Remus wouldn’t have pined after James. He was too quick to blush, too emotionally reserved. He could clearly recall long periods during rows with Lily when James refused to be extracted from his bed, blackly morose to have fallen out of favor. For all his apparent confidence and effortless popularity, James had been easy to wound.

Maybe he and Remus had been too alike in that way to be anything but friends. Additionally, James was probably straight and if he wasn’t, had become infatuated with the girl he would marry far too early in life to ever explore other preferences.

Lily hadn’t seriously dated anyone else, and if cornered on the issue, would claim she had no time or interest for anything that wasn’t brief and superficial. But Remus had still identified a lover or two, never physically like James but always quiet and smitten.

And maybe that profile fit Severus, too, Remus thought as they apparently reached their destination. Severus unlocked the door with a key and adjusted the wards with an inaudible incantation and a complex wand movement while Remus politely averted his eyes. Though Remus had never known Severus to make any overt signs of affection toward Lily, jealousy was the most obvious reason for the worst of what he’d said to her back in school. Maybe one day Lily would tell him what had led to their reconnection, though he doubted it. Gushing about romance would be the furthest thing from typical for clever, sarcastic, pragmatic Lily.

They were standing inside a brewing room, with no natural place to sit. This didn’t appear to be an oversight, Remus mused, as Severus handed him a potions case artfully charmed to hold its contents in stasis and ensure against spillage or breakage. The potions master rattled off instructions, adding that he was saying nothing that wasn’t described in the written instructions inside the case, and advising that additional questions could be sent via owl and Severus would respond as promptly as he was able.

“You should not have questions, however,” Severus added. “I took care to make the instructions quite thorough, and ultimately there is nothing to know except the timing of administration. It goes without saying that the potions are meant for you and not your charge, I trust? They should not be used by a minor at such an experimental stage.”

Remus nodded gravely. “I wouldn’t dream of giving them to Zack until we’ve ensured that they’re safe and have the intended effects.”

Severus nodded shortly. “Very well. Is there anything you wish to ask me?” He looked stiff, almost preternaturally motionless, where he stood near the wall. His body was angled away from Remus in what Remus thought was likely to be an unconsciously defensive posture. Remus searched his mind for the right thing to say, but before he could stop himself, he blurted something else instead.

“So, we’ll see you on Christmas Eve?”

Severus’s head jerked in Remus’s direction and his dark eyes became wide. _Oh, bloody hell,_ thought Remus. _She hasn’t asked him yet._

“It’s only…Lily mentioned that…” Remus hadn’t felt so awkward in many, many years, which was a real achievement, as he was a rather socially handicapped person.

But something was happening in Severus’s face. Some flicker of what Remus recognized as a positive reaction. Before Remus could puzzle through it, Severus had adjusted his usual, emotionless mask and added a tight smile. “Perhaps. I have not confirmed any plans at this time.”

Remus nodded, eager to be offered an escape from the subject. “Well, then. I’ll, ah, review the instructions carefully, and should I have questions – which I trust I won’t – I’ll owl you well in advance of the full moon.”

“Yes, as I said,” Severus murmured, beginning to make pointed eyes at the door. Remus nodded some more and preceded him from the room so that Severus could relock the door and secure the wards, before escorting Remus back through the castle.

“Quiet at this time of year,” Remus observed, unable to contain a shiver. “Cold, too,” he added, shivering in the moment before his very expensive and intricately charmed cloak adjusted to the temperature change as they neared the doors. “How’s Harry getting along?”

The question seemed to surprise Severus, but he hid his reaction quickly. “He’s doing fine. It always takes Slytherins a few years to truly settle in with their year mates and their house.”

That wasn’t really what Remus had meant; he’d assumed Harry was doing fine in that respect. So like James, he thought he’d have Slytherin eating out of his hand by now. Remus frowned, thinking he’d have to ask Lily about Harry’s friends. Come to think of it, Harry hadn’t really mentioned any. He hadn’t imagined Severus Snape as a particularly involved Head of House, but was pleased by this evidence to the contrary.

“Thank you, again,” Remus said, even though he knew it wasn’t what Severus wanted to hear, it had to be said. He didn’t know what else to say – any reference to seeing Severus “later” or “soon” ventured too close to the topic of the holiday, over which Remus was still kicking himself. Fortunately Severus simply inclined his head, turned and walked in the other direction. And Remus, bemused, walked out into the cold air and angled his path toward the Great Lake. Just a quick stop, before his fingers and toes started to go numb despite the spells on his gloves and boots. Even magic could only do so much when pitted against the might of a Scottish winter.


	9. Chapter 9

_December_

Harry had planned to keep the diary in his trunk during the holidays, gripped by the irrational thought his mother might smell it on him, some side special side effect of her career. But in the end he could only hold out a couple days before he got it out, there in the privacy of his room at Grimmauld Place, and greeted Tom.

“What day is it?”

This was something Tom had begun to ask just in the past several weeks. Never before had he asked about anything but Harry; it had surprised Harry at first, when he asked these basic, orienting questions. What day is it? Is it morning or evening? Where are you? What does the room look like?

Despite what Tom said, about not being a person, just a unique expression of a certain spell, when he asked these questions Harry couldn’t help imagining Tom as something very different. As the same alluring teenage boy from the memories, trapped in the sensory vacuum of a book. It pained Harry to think of Tom this way.

“It’s two days before Christmas,” Harry wrote.

“The Christmas holidays were always a meditative time for me,” Tom wrote. Harry had grown so accustomed to the way the diary shimmered when Tom was about to invite him into a memory, that he was falling into one before Tom could actually ask.

Harry wasn’t there long. He saw what he easily recognized as the Slytherin Common Room, not much changed, empty but for Tom. He sat close to the fire curled into a chair, a blanket over his legs, head bent over a book. It was not a text book; Harry stepped close enough to read the title.

 _Metaphysics: an Introduction_.

Harry watched Tom’s gaze suddenly lift from the book, so that he had the fleeting sense of making eye contact with the memory of the older boy. But of course it was an illusion, and Tom was only gazing thoughtfully into the fire. In this memory, he was younger - leaner, sharper, somehow.

“Why wouldn’t you spend the holidays with your family?” Harry murmured aloud.

Toms voice came into Harry’s mind, though the visible figure here didn’t speak.

“I had no family. In the summer, unfortunately, I returned to the orphanage where I was born. I was permitted to spend holidays at Hogwarts.” The words were matter of fact, but guarded in a way Harry understood very well. Harry hates telling people about his dead father or the circumstances of his death. In the wizarding world Harry’s tragic past was practically a bedtime story, and the pitying looks people tended to shoot at him turned his stomach. They seemed to revive the old pain. He could only imagine how much worse it would be if he were as totally alone as Tom.

Harry was back in his own present, blinking at the diary, a moment later.

“What’s metaphysics?” Harry wrote.

“Part of a muggle academia called philosophy.” Tom wrote. “I used to be rather fascinated by it. It’s best understood by examples.

“Consider,” Tom wrote, “that a man walking along a cliff falls to his death when the cliff side falls away. Below, in the harbor, a man stands on the deck of the ship, and, looking up, sees the rocks begin to shift, and watches in dismay when man falls. A crawling vine with purple flowers had taken root, and its clutching roots destabilized the ground. Up until the walking man reached the point where the ground was weak, nothing was fixed. He could have realized he left something at home and turned back. He could have decided the wind off the water was too cold, and changed course. He might have even thought it unnecessarily dangerous to walk so near the edge.

“But after he stepped foot upon that weak rock, marked by those purple vines, nothing could be changed to save him, and so by the time the man watching from the ship sees the walking man, before the first rock falls, the walking man is already dead. Do you understand?”

“It’s a story about fate,” Harry tried, but he wasn’t sure. He worried his lip until Tom’s reply appeared.

“It’s just a story,” Tom wrote, then changed the subject, and Harry felt like he’d failed a test. Later that night he dreamed of walking near the sea, the rock crumbling, and a long fall - as his body rotated end over end like a stone, he thought, I’m already dead, I’m already dead. I’m already dead.

But when the fall ended, instead of hitting the rocks, Harry was caught up in strong arms, and he saw the face of Tom, memorized from hour after hour spent studying it in the diary’s memories.

“I saw you from the ship,” Tom said. And Harry woke up.

Tom’s memories were beautiful. Harry always spent his time in the memories immersed, not analyzing, but later he couldn’t help himself. He thought Tom must see the world more...deeply, maybe, than Harry himself. When he was alive, Tom would go out into the woods just to breathe the moist-earth smell of the silent trees, or scale the astronomy tower, just to listen to the wind. Beside the Great Lake, he was so still and watchful that once - in a memory he shared with Harry - a merman came so close they could make steady eye contact through the thin barrier of a mere inch of lake water.

In the memory, Harry asked Tom,

“How did you die?”

“The memories in the diary stop when it was created.” Again the voice came in Harry’s mind. They had a lot of conversations this way now, in some idle memory. It was easier than writing, though it did leave Harry more tired.

“Then how do you know you’re dead?”

“I never said that I was. You assumed.”

“Do you know why Lucius Malfoy had the diary? Do you think he stole it from you - er, from a future you?”

“I don’t know about that either. I knew an Abraxas Malfoy.”

Harry had heard Draco expound on the excellence of his pedigree enough times to know that was his grandfather. “Lucius is Abraxas’s son,” Harry wrote.

“I see.” Tom didn’t write again that evening.

Harry thought their conversations had become more serious at some point, but he wasn’t sure at what point they’d become so. It had been gradual, he though dubiously. That was natural, probably.

It was Christmas Eve and Professor Snape was joining them for dinner. Lily had asked Harry if having his professor would make Harry uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Harry had said, brows raised. Lily rolled her eyes. That had been the first day he was back from Hogwarts.

“You’ll be fine.”

“If you didn’t care, why did you bother asking me?” Harry demanded shrilly. Lily was taking dishes out of the cabinet and washing them. Apparently Kreacher had washed them once already in his halfhearted way. Harry was familiar with the chore.

“Because I thought maybe you were mature enough to give a better answer,” Lily said, standing on her tiptoes to reach a glass so smudged it wasn’t even transparent.

“Isn’t Christmas Eve for family?” Aware he was whining, Harry glared at the plate of scrambled eggs in front of him and then stabbed fiercely with his fork.

“Friends are family,” Lily reminded him, a line she’d come up with when Harry, approximately seven years old, had burst into tears upon realizing Sirius and Remus were honorary, rather than biological, uncles.

“Hmph.”

“You know Severus doesn’t have many close friends, and has spent most Christmases alone?”

Harry had honestly never thought about it, but he could reluctantly admit that was a sad fact if it was true.

“And I’ve also told you that the two of us have become very close,” she added, and Harry thought that the glass she was carefully drying had already been dried once. Her back was to him, but her shoulders seemed somewhat tense.

“I guess so,” Harry said warily. “What about Remus and Sirius and Zack?”

“They’re coming too, of course. Even though Sirius is being childish about it. ‘Misery in the walls,’ he says.”

Harry couldn’t help smiling at that. Sirius hated 12 Grimmauld Place, certainly, though Harry suspected Sirius’s feelings were rooted in events and memories that probably weren’t very amusing at all. Also, Lily was still moving the towel over the glass with swift, nervous motions.

“Mom,” he said lowly, in sudden shock. Her hands went still. “You aren’t...like, dating Professor Snape. Are you.”

“Um,” Lily said, voice rather high.

“Because that would make me very uncomfortable!” Harry cried.

“Harry,” Lily started, and Harry was prepared to throw a fit on a scale he hadn’t since he was six years old, except his mother turned around and he saw her face and it stopped him in his tracks.

She didn’t look stricken or angry. She looked...young. Very pretty, and young, and she was smiling a little shyly. Harry had never seen her look this way.

“I care about Severus very much,” she said.

Harry rolled his eyes and slumped in his chair. “Fine,” he huffed. “I guess this explains why he’s been so nice,” he added bitterly. Lily was really smiling now, he noticed when he looked up at her as she reached over to muss his hair.

“You poor, poor child,” she murmured, grinning.

“Tell me about it.”

 With this conversation in mind, Harry stood by the floo at seven o’clock on December 24 in fairly dressy robes, watching cautiously as a tall, black clad figure stepped out onto the hearth. He studied Professor Snape with heightened scrutiny. Harry didn’t know about these things, but he decided that while no one would call the Professor handsome, he was striking. He had nice skin, excellent posture, and he was trim and fit. Harry had always thought of him as slightly greasy, but he saw now that his hair was soft and clean looking. Maybe it had been that way for a while now and Harry hadn’t noticed.

”Harry,” said Professor Snape. “Merry Christmas Eve.” 

A loud crack came before Harry could reply and Remus and Sirius appeared, mid argument, Zack detaching himself to zip up to Harry for one of his split-second hugs.

”Dads are fighting about something dad got me, and dad told him I’m already spoiled, and dad said kids are supposed to be spoiled. You’re aunt Lily’s friend who I didn’t get to say good bye to before because you and aunt Lily were unavailable but not gone when I got done talking to the pixies. Do you remember me? I’m Zack.”

Harry smiled wryly at the dismayed expression on Professor Snape’s face.

”Zack is a real talker,” he explained. Professor Snape raised his eyes to meet Harry’s and for a moment they shared an amused look that made something that had been wound tight in Harry loosen a notch.

 _This could be all right, then_.

Lily appeared in their midst, taking off an apron and shushing Remus and Sirius. The two men sheepishly ceased their arguing and moved forward to embrace her at the same time, as they always did. But Harry saw that Lily’s gaze went automatically to Professor Snape, and when it found him, her smile became soft and warm in a way that made Harry blush and look away.

 _Yes_ , he thought. _This is all right._


	10. Chapter 10

_January-March, 1993_

After Harry was safely back at Hogwarts, Lily and Severus decamped for Egypt, where they found Quirrell, thanks to Lily’s tracking spell, but no evidence he was doing anything but working in a dismal little potions shop and licking his wounds.

The first several days of following Quirrell were like an odd vacation. When Quirrell was at work in the potions shop, they had little to do but wander shops in muggle Egypt, visit restaurants that Lily knew from previous visits for work, and work their way down a checklist of destinations that Severus had shyly confessed to hoping to see. Lily had always detested tourist traps, but was oddly charmed by seeing them with Severus. He even let her transfigure a set of robes into muggle jeans and a long-sleeved jumper that suited him so well Lily couldn’t help clinging to his side and holding his hand everywhere they went.

But tension built after two weeks without success, and redoubled when Lily realized Quirrell was not going to lead them to Voldemort.

After convincing themselves there was no sign of the dark lord in his vicinity, they went to Albania where they questioned everyone Dumbledore and the Order had already questioned, and confirmed that no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary around the time that someone or something must have relocated Voldemort’s seeking rune.

Lily showed Severus the place where the rune had been, and he spread a potion she’d never seen before in a large circle around the spot.

“Telling elixir,” he said. “Takes forever to brew and has a shelf life of just a few days, so it’s rarely ready when you need it, but it’s quite powerful. It can show you the magical signature in a place, and the residue of any spells that were cast, going back a year or so.”

Impressed, Lily watched Severus apply the potion, then drink a second vial himself, grimaced at the taste, and speak a few words with two short flicks of his wand. Startled, Lily watched a shimmering net of magic spring from the tip of Severus’s wand and float gently toward the ground, expanding as it lowered so that by the time it reached the earth it had stretched to meet the perimeter established by the potion.

Streams of sparks emerged at three locations in the circle, and a dense black shadow that had the quality of fog, developed ominously where the rune itself had been placed.

“Only his signature,” Severus murmured, looking at that inky signature and going quite pale. Lily shuddered, too, and couldn’t conceal her disappointment. “How could he have moved it himself, if he had no body?”

“Someone else could have just picked it up, without using magic,” Severus reminded her. “The signature would only appear if their magic was used in the perimeter, recently enough.”

“Worth a try,” Lily said, encouraging him to join her back outside the perimeter and, wanting to erase that uneasy look on his face since he’d seen Voldemort’s signature, she took his hand and squeezed it. Severus looked down at her and smiled.

Lily had outlined three steps for her search. The first was to follow Quirrell, and she now bitterly resented how optimistic she’d let herself be. Of course the dark lord had totally discarded Quirrell.

The second was to go to Albania and search for a lead Dumbledore might have missed. Which might have seemed like a waste of time in a world where Lily still trusted Dumbledore.

And the third, which Lily hadn’t sincerely expected to need to resort to, was to go to Taos Pueblo and perform a dangerous ritual with a precognitive secondary effect, which also happened to require Lily find a Seer to participate.

And here she was, with no choice but to do just that and not quite sure how she would.

“You should go back to Hogwarts,” Lily told Severus during their last evening at the inn in Albania. “It’s already been longer than we first planned.”

Sitting across from her at the little tea table in their room, Severus shrugged, posture oddly relaxed, as though he was unaffected by the constant disappointment of the past weeks. Though they’d found pleasant moments for themselves, Lily’s temper had suffered terribly from the compounding disappointments in their search, and Severus obviously had no experience sidestepping the land mines of close and ongoing cohabitation. As for that last, Lily wasn’t any good at it either. The only person she’d lived with in the past decade was Harry.

But they were doing better than Lily had feared. Which was a little terrifying in itself, if she was honest with herself. Which was probably why she felt equal parts irritation and relief when Severus said, “I’ll stay with you for as long as it takes.”

Why she indulged the irritation, she couldn’t say. “It could be months, you’d miss the rest of term.”

Severus just shrugged again, not even looking at her.

“It could be years,” she said, voice going strangely low. “You have your own life, Severus.”

At least that finally got him to look up at her. He had an eyebrow up, and color in his cheeks and on his throat. She was distantly aware of the fact that this was going in a direction she hadn’t really intended, and yet she did nothing to intervene. Instead she said, “Well?”

“It’s not just your search,” he reminded her in a careful, even voice she had heard him use with Sirius, but never with her. “You aren’t the only one he’s hurt.”

“And how did he hurt you, Severus? Other than, apparently, not being quite the dark lord you were promised.” She told herself she meant it lightly, teasing. They were often darkly humorous with each other, but in this moment it couldn’t be taken that way. Severus went very still.

“Yes,” he said in a silky voice that made Lily’s skin crawl. “Of course. He wasn’t dark enough for me, that was it. It wasn’t the murder and torture and proposed genocide, no.”

Lily looked away. “I don’t think you can call us equally invested. That’s all I meant.”

“Because I was only claiming to be a spy, is that it?” He wasn’t shouting, but his voice still sounded booming in the close quarters of their little room. Lily gave him a scathing look.

“You weren’t always a spy,” she reminded him, and in the back of her head a frantic voice cried, _Lily, no, no, no. No._

Severus’s face was now fully suffused with color, and there was something worse than rage in his eyes. Hurt, Lily thought. She’d hurt him. But, before she could stop herself - “Well, it’s true.”

Something popped in the fire, a soft noise. Severus startled as badly as if it had been a gunshot. He turned a stricken expression towards the fire. “I never believed you could forgive me, but i thought you had.”

“Oh, Severus,” Lily said softly, but she didn’t go to him. She couldn’t quite make herself leave her chair. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

“I thought that you had; I didn’t think we would do.” He gestured between the two of them without looking at her, then swallowed hard. “I never thought we would do this if you hadn’t.”

Lily had always thought herself above grudges. But that wasn’t because she thought herself particularly forgiving. She wasn’t sure what forgiveness was; she wasn’t sure one could decide to forgive, for example. She wasn’t sure, so she didn’t say anything, and after several seconds of silence Severus made a soft sound like an injured animal, and stood up.

“Then, I’ll go, but you...you’ll be careful, won’t you?” She could see that he didn’t want to look at her, but he forced himself, something fierce and unapproachable about him. Lily had never seen this side of Severus directed at her; it was terrible.

“I’m always careful,” she said, sure as she began to speak that her voice would wobble. It didn’t. It came out quiet but steely.

Severus disapparated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it couldn’t be that easy!


	11. Chapter 11

Generally, Gilderoy stayed out of politics. He had a fan base to think of, and he had carefully cultivated a politically neutral image, which meant that his fans represented a fairly even spread of political views. By declaring opinions on certain topics he was sure to alienate at least half of them. Two-thirds, when the political climate was in one of its less binary cycles.

But that didn’t mean Gilderoy wouldn’t allow politicians to court him a little, especially if their events were sufficiently disguised as dedicated to one of those charitable causes that no one could really find fault with. _Society for Squib Welfare_ was a favorite, as its specific works were unknown, and could conceivably be anything from helping fund the improvements of secret attic compartments for the safe housing of Squibs to sending them to Hogwarts.

Still, under less socially desperate circumstances Gilderoy would not ever have agreed to being seen in a garishly decorated ballroom speaking to Jerome Travers, who closely resembled his triplet sons Malcolm, Michael, and Mellovius Travers, former year mates of Gilderoy’s at Hogwarts and among the least pleasant of the bigots he had known in his life. From what Gilderoy had learned of Mr. Travers’s political platform since arriving at the ballroom, he thought his children might be more open-minded than their father, or at least better at censoring the most socially fraught of their opinions in mixed company.

The theme of the evening was the violent proclivities of werewolves with a side helping of Pureblood superiority, which Gilderoy was still trying to pin down. These blood purity views refused to be painted with a broad brush, and Gilderoy had already heard enough conflicting statements that were Arabella with him (she’d begged off as his plus one at the last minute, citing illness, damn her) the two of them would already have made a drinking game of it and been rather sloshed by now.

“Did you know,” Jerome Travers was saying, speaking in a way that reminded Gilderoy of a certain few among his younger students, who didn’t yet know how to engage in effective public speaking but weren’t born with the capacity to experience self-consciousness. The result was an imperious monotone, slightly nasal, and an inability to read the audience and make adjustments accordingly on the fly. “There is no recorded case of a Pureblood witch or wizard being made a werewolf? The virus latches onto the muggle genes, you see.”

In his peripheral vision, Gilderoy could see a young man who Gilderoy recognized as a journalist, though he couldn’t recall his name. The journalist had a dismayed expression on his face, which Gilderoy took to mean that the young man knew that what Travers was saying was mostly rubbish, but he had covered so few political events that he was still capable of being surprised by this kind of thing.

“All the more reason the half-bloods and muggleborns require special protections,” added a petite witch who had been hovering just behind and to the right of Jerome Travers all evening. At first Gilderoy had thought she must be his wife, but since then he had realized she was some kind of aide who had internalized the equivalent of one thousand cue cards worth of party lines. Gilderoy was reminded of the muggle machines that would cough out a fortune if you fed them a quarter.

“What kind of special protections?” Asked the young journalist warily. Jerome Travers rotated his head in the journalist’s direction, his fixed smile unwavering, and after a moment of silence, the aide provided her prompt.

“Mr. Travers has described a detailed process by which half-blood and muggleborns would receive additional services from the Ministry. If you request a copy, it will be delivered by owl post within thirty days.”

“How would one request…” the journalist began, but the chandeliers had begun giving off the peach-colored fog that was the call to table at these kinds of things. Gilderoy couldn’t be sure, but he thought the aide’s pinched mouth relaxed a fraction in relief at not needing to further deflect the journalist’s inquiries.

Gilderoy was the only young and beautiful person in the room, he was loathe to discover. The guest list seemed to have been low on lustre, and he imagined that the event planner hoped he would supply some. As amusing as this bizarre side effect of democracy had the potential to be, Gilderoy’s mood wouldn’t allow him to take any pleasure in it. He saw that he was at the Travers table – which, _great_ , but then, he would have been annoyed if he hadn’t warranted a seat of honor considering the lack of competition.

“Gilderoy Lockhart,” said a younger version of Jerome Travers, who Gilderoy recognized after a series of long blinks to be one of the triplets. He couldn’t remember which one – they weren’t identical, but close enough.

“Ah, Travers,” he said, mustering the best smile he could, satisfied to find even such a weak effort was enough to at least make a mere Travers blush and pause. “Do I have the pleasure of sitting beside you and your siblings, then?”

“Oh, it’s only me here. Michael and Mellovius are canvassing the neighborhood. Can’t place all the best troops in the same battle!”

This was Malcolm, then; thank Merlin for the process of elimination and doubly so for sparing Gilderoy a triple dose of those cavemen. It would probably put him off his food altogether, and his attendance had been secured in no small part by the promise of refined food after months at the Hogwarts staff table. There were delicious dishes served there, to be sure, but most of them contained too much butter for Gilderoy to indulge.

“Very nice to see you again,” Gilderoy said smoothly. Lying required no real effort for him anymore. The younger Travers stood until Gilderoy sat, then took the chair next to him. They were the only ones to have reached the table so far, leaving Gilderoy in suspense as to just how tedious their remaining four dinner companions could be.

“What are you writing these days?”

It might have surprised Gilderoy, several years ago, when someone who was horrible in school was on his best behavior in public. So many adults knew how to be strategic with their sincerity. But it was still jarring with a Travers triplet, when those three had been so especially hungry for the torment of anyone outside Slytherin house. He had idly compared Greg Goyle and Vincent Crabbe to the triplets as he remembered them since he’d begun teaching at Hogwarts. Those two boys would be the same destructive force if they were without Draco Malfoy to boss them around and give them direction. A fine example of the Sorting Hat relaxing its “cunning” standard when it came to letting vile Pureblood foot soldiers into Slytherin.

Merlin, but Gilderoy really _was_ in a bad place, emotionally. He had always harbored a rather fond regard for Slytherin, despite the disdain he often had for persons, places and things to which he was denied access. Tonight it seemed no subject was safe from a strictly internal dressing-down.

“I’m actually working on a new curriculum for Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, where I now teach,” Gilderoy said smoothly, hoping someone would be by to refill his wine glass soon. His ability to conjure a pleasant tone and a sunny smile were strictly dependent on the steady and sustained consumption of alcohol.

“Teaching! Yes, I had heard that. Congratulations. How is Hogwarts, then?”

For the first time, a flicker of something akin to discomfort flashed in Malcolm’s eyes. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten that the last time they had been in the same room, two of the triplets had been holding down a second year Ravenclaw while the third triplet delivered a vicious kick to the much younger child’s abdomen. The boys had not technically been expelled, but they were home educated during their NEWT year, and if they’d come from a lesser family everyone knew they wouldn’t have been permitted to sit for them at Hogwarts. As it was, they had filed back in at the end of the following year with their noses higher and their sneers more established than ever.

“It has been an adjustment, but I enjoy it.” Gilderoy was reluctantly impressed. Though he had seen a brief show of weakness, overall the façade was very good, and easy to play along with. For someone less…well, less skilled in facades than Gilderoy, Malcolm Travers would be doing a very believable impression of a kind and thoughtful son pleased to have the opportunity to spend an evening supporting his father in the noble goal of public service.

“I must say, your father’s candidacy comes as a surprise,” Gilderoy began, delighting in the way tension suddenly filled Malcolm, though his smile stayed steady. “I wouldn’t think he would be able to part from his many business interests in order to spare the time.”

Malcolm visibly relaxed when rather than a veiled insult, he was handed an acknowledgement of the family wealth and business successes, instead. “Well, he’ll be forced to step back, of course. But the whole family is quite involved in our interests, so there are plenty of us to pick up the slack.”

Gilderoy thought about commenting on the fact that one hundred percent of the Travers children were apparently campaigning in some form this evening, rather than picking up slack in the family’s empire, but it was really too easy to be worthy of his wit. He looked for less low hanging fruit in the fodder he had so far, and smiled to himself.

“That commitment is quite clear, with the Scions of the house still unwed. It speaks to the dedication of you and your brothers, that you would set aside securing your own heirs in order to ensure the operations of so many pillars of the industries upon which we ordinary citizens depend.” This time it wasn’t hard to put on the solemn mask with wide eyes and a tone of gentle vehemence. Gilderoy was energized by the game of back and forth; it made performing a pleasure.

“Family first,” Malcolm stuttered, coloring again and looking away to collect himself. His response made absolutely no sense to Gilderoy for a moment, until he remembered it was a Pureblood saying that should be taken to mean the whole family, encompassing all past and future generations, and not the immediate family of the speaker. “Also, ah, it was decided that Mellovius shall be heir. Last summer.” He cleared his throat and looked at Gilderoy again with a determined smile, showing all his teeth.

Well, that certainly meant that Mellovius wasn’t out simply canvassing. He should be the one paraded in public, rather than taking turns with his brothers like they all had when their father couldn’t decide which one of them they would pretend had been born first. The matter of declaring an heir with multiples was always messy. Purebloods were rumored to kill off a few spares sometimes just to simplify things, though Gilderoy doubted anything like that had been done in recent centuries, if ever. Still, more than two sons was considered excessive and almost unseemly; after all, it meant chopping up the inheritance to provide for them all, even if the younger ones got a pittance compared to the firstborn.

Gilderoy and Malcolm stood as the elder, actively politicking Travers arrived with his aide and two middle-aged witches Gilderoy didn’t recognize. They all nodded at each other and sat, and Gilderoy found that the two witches were between Gilderoy and Travers, a relief since it meant Gilderoy was unlikely to be in the frame of any photographs with Jerome Travers. The man’s platform was far too extreme for Gilderoy’s comfort; even if he hadn’t found its details personally distasteful, the association couldn’t do anything good for book sales.

As the first course was served, a mild-mannered witch went to the podium at the front of the room to speak vaguely about the theories surrounding the “phenomena” of Squibs without ever saying anything specific enough to be fact-checked or argued over. It took thirty minutes, and since everyone at Gilderoy’s table except Jerome Travers was pretending to pay attention, Gilderoy was able to enjoy a delightful arugula salad in silence. He had missed goat cheese.

They applauded the witch, and Jerome Travers’s aide began giving Travers very pointed looks, which he didn’t notice, forcing her to resort to throat-clearing, which he also didn’t notice. Finally she produced her wand, vanished his salad plate, and then said, “Now, Mr. Travers, you’ll speak now,” in a tight but deferential tone.

“Ah,” was all he said, rising and dusting breadstick crumbs from his robes. The aide didn’t follow him to the podium, though her posture suggested it pained her not to do so.

“We’re here today because we’ve all known a Squib,” said Jerome Travers when he landed at the podium. He looked around the room a little vacantly, pausing too long. “Squibs need more from our government. More protections, and I want to give them those protections.”

A discontented hum was stirred up among the assemblage. This didn’t sound like a few words in support of Squibs, but more like campaigning. Bad campaigning, but campaigning still, and this was not supposed to be a campaign event, even though it was. It wasn’t supposed to be. Near the podium at the journalist’s table, charmed quills were racing and the young man Gilderoy had seen earlier in the evening, agape, looked more disbelieving yet.

Warming to his subject, Jerome Travers had gained some energy. “It isn’t safe or appropriate for Squibs to be out amongst wizards with no wands, or ability to protect themselves. And we all know about what happens. What can happen out on the muggle streets to anyone. Even our loved ones, even if those loved ones are Squibs, we worry about what the muggles can do. And have done. The magic we have, which elevates our mental state, the muggles don’t have that.”

Arabella won’t be able to believe she missed this, Gilderoy thought in delight, listening to Jerome Travers drift through several more horrifying, if confusing, expressions of his attitudes on the sad and defenseless reality of Squibs and the danger of muggles to themselves and everyone else. Then he circled back from pretending to talk about Squibs and got to the heart of this campaign speech he’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to make.

“Then there are werewolves. The worst of muggle nature given fangs and claws. Thirsty for blood and out looking for it every full moon. That’s more than twelve times per year, which is more than once per month.” Travers paused to let the elementary math of this deduction sink in properly. “We’ve all seen them. Just last week there were two children nearly mauled to death by werewolves, and the Ministry swept it under the rug, as the media here could tell you, if they weren’t complacent. I say, no more.”

Gilderoy was shocked to see the witch next to him nodding slightly, eyes shining with an agreement that struck Gilderoy as honest. Who would she be pandering to? He felt an instant’s unease, then he remembered that this was Travers’s table; of course he had carefully selected the few morons he could find who agreed with his drabble and surrounded himself with them.

Still, the applause, when it came, sounded more fervent than Gilderoy would have thought a dazed and unhappy crowd could have managed. His own palms brushed together without making much of a sound; nicely masked by the ringing endorsement coming from everyone else at his table but the aide, who continued to appear incapable of human expression, though she did stand and nod approvingly at Jerome when he wound his way back to his chair.

“What on Earth happened last week to those poor children?” Cried one of the witches between Gilderoy and Travers. The second course had arrived, a lovely aromatic soup that Gilderoy knew he wouldn’t be able to enjoy anymore.

Travers deflected, of course, because there _weren’t_ any children and there _was_ no newspaper conspiracy. Gilderoy didn’t have to do his own research to know that; if it was the truth, Travers would have offered up all the inflammatory detail to rile up his crowd. But because it was a lie, he kept it vague. Probably a couple of kids had been bitten by a dog – _Pureblood_ kids, maybe, who after crying werewolf could then point to their superior genetics as the reason they weren’t turned as a result.

Gilderoy was able to tune everyone else out, more or less, while still smiling and nodding and frowning and nodding at the appropriate times. He was getting good at it, he thought, this existing among people without staying present and grounded in their midst. A little too good, maybe, if Arabella’s insinuations were to be believed. Gilderoy had thought he’d fallen to the deepest point of his cynisim during that dinner, until the next morning back at the breakfast table at Hogwarts. The _Prophet_ headline, complete with supporting documents for once, revealed that rather than a political blunder that forced him from the race, Jerome Travers’s words at the _Society for Squib Welfare_ annual dinner resonated so deeply with so many, he had received a record-setting cumulative of campaign donations for a single evening at this early point in the race.


	12. Chapter 12

_March, 1993_

Hermione rarely saw a Slytherin student except in passing. For whatever odd reason, the Slytherins were generally paired with Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff. There had to be some sort of historic house prejudice based reason for this, but Hermione didn’t dwell on it. That meant that she saw Harry Potter rarely if at all, until she finally got invited to Neville Longbottom’s herbology study group. She’d been angling for membership since first year.

Neville lacked the focus and intent to be excellent at anything else, but had a strange and remarkable instinct for growing things. Hermione knew that Harry was Neville’s friend and therefore in his study group, but she hadn’t really thought through how awkward it would be to see her erstwhile summer roommate again.

“Hi, Hermione,” Harry said, perking up at the sight of her. They were in the bigger of the two Herbology classrooms, eight second year students wilting in the charmed humidity of the room. It was still snowy outside, an uncomfortable contrast to the greenhouses even after they shed their robes and rolled up their sleeves.

“Harry,” she said politely, nodding back. She really didn’t know what to do with Harry. She had decided not to be friends with him, and she was too stubborn to revisit the decision, even though all the emotions she’d had when she made the choice had faded now. She could barely summon the sting of outrage when she recalled their absurd first year meeting and his transparent efforts to manipulate her. All summer he had been polite and respectful of boundaries, so she couldn’t really complain. And even though Lily Potter had never made it seem like she expected Hermione and Harry to be friends, Hermione got the impression that if they were, Lily would be pleased. And Hermione had a great deal of affection and respect for Lily.

Still, she didn’t take the empty chair next to Harry’s, settling instead for one nearer Neville, who sat at the head of the table with a shy smile. He was still pudgy like he’d been as a first year, but instead of short, he had grown to a more medium height, almost as tall as Hermione herself. His round cheeks were a little rosy, presumably in delight at being in close proximity to plants. Hermione had never seen him look anything but anxious and cowed outside of the greenhouses.

“Mandrakes again, is it, Neville?” sighed Seamus Finnegan, and Hermione spent a moment feeling charmed by the lilt of his Irish accent. He sank into his chair to Neville’s left, prodding the pile of earmuffs in the center of the table unhappily. “I thought you said I’d repotted mine properly last time.”

“You did, I think; our sample must just be rather combative; he hopped into the next pot over and had a row with another sample. Did you know they bruise so easily they each gave each other black eyes? Professor Sprout offered to let us have a new one so that we can experience a more typical psyche, but I asked if we could keep the old one. I figure if we can get him sorted, handling the lesson specimens will be a breeze!”

While the others stared at Neville in evident chagrin, Hermione couldn’t hide her smile. “I’ve read that diet can affect the adolescent mandrake’s moods rather spectacularly,” she said quietly, delighted to be proving her worth within the first five minutes of her first session with the group. Hermione rarely bothered with study groups, but she couldn’t deny that Neville was better at this than her, and she would benefit from learning from him. Hermione’s desire to be excellent easily eclipsed her pride.

“Yes, that’s right, Hermione,” Neville said, smiling serenely at her without seeming to notice that there were others at the table who were displeased. “I’ve been thinking of adding a little peppermint to the water, but did you have other thoughts?”

Of course she did.

After the session ended Hermione and Neville walked side by side back toward the castle, boots crunching in the snow, animatedly discussing their respective class schedules and which one of them could pass by to sing a lullabye at their sample’s bedtime.

“I normally study in the library on Tuesday evenings until nine,” Hermione said, “so I could probably get here by 9:15, but…”

“…I really think consistency is important. Even a fifteen minute deviation could spoil its REM cycle.”

Hermione nodded. “I agree. I’ll leave the library early; I can make it up on Thursday nights, if you’re free then.”

It was only after they parted ways that Hermione was conscious of a presence just behind her. She turned and smiled uncertainly at Harry, who grinned back.

“Hi, Hermione. I was hoping I could walk to the library with you. Isn’t your free period still on for another half hour? Potions was cancelled for Slytherin and Griffindor today.”

“Again?” Hermione’s nose wrinkled. “I never thought I would say this, but I am really looking forward to Professor Snape returning. Professor Slughorn doesn’t seem to be adjusting to a work week very well, does he?”

“If our prefects weren’t so responsible, Slytherin would be having a mad rave every night. As it is, it’s just Friday and Saturday evenings. Slughorn never checks on us.”

Hermione laughed, even though it was an odd joke. Harry looked at her with a serious expression.

“I’m serious, though anyone below fourth year generally spends all night hiding out in the dormitories.”

Hermione laughed grew faint. She’d have to give Draco some grief about that when she saw him again, and count her Muggleborn blessing she had been ineligible to sort Slytherin.

“How’s your mum?” Hermione asked.

“Oh, pretty well, I think,” Harry answered. “Traveling a lot.”

“Egypt, wasn’t it?” Hermione said, then could have kicked herself. She’d recognized the last owl from Lily as one indigenous to northern Africa, and based upon the prominence of the Egyptian wizarding community, she’d assumed…

Of course, Harry was dismayed. “How do you know that?”

Hermione blushed, quickening her pace. Did it really take this long to get to the blasted library? “Well, we, you know. Exchange letters. On occasion.” Almost weekly, really, though Hermione didn’t think what she had said was _precisely_ a lie.

“You’re pen pals with my mother?” Harry breathed, and Hermione thought he was having to struggle a little to keep up without breaking into a jog. He was shorter than her, like most of the boys in their year, but small even for all that, and her stride was considerably longer.

“I thought she might have mentioned it, but she asked if we could keep in touch after the summer. And we have.” Hermione wasn’t sure why she felt a little defensive. They were at the library entrance at last, and she didn’t want Harry to follow her to a table, so she turned to tell him good bye somehow. But Harry didn’t appear ready to conclude their conversation.

“You can’t be friends with my mother!”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed, and her arms tightened around her books. “Of course I can! It’s certainly not up to _you_ who I’m friends with!”

“But…” Harry’s mouth worked, his green eyes wide and a little glassy, like a puppy that had been kicked. “You won’t be _my_ friend, but you’ll be friends with _my mother_?”

This line of argument perplexed Hermione. Harry and his mother had so little in common that she would have thought it stranger if someone wanted to be friends with them both. Saying so seemed rude, somehow, so she kept quiet.

“Is this still about last year?” Harry asked softly, looking abashed. “Will you not ever…forgive me, for that? It all turned out rather well for you in the end.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “How it turned out doesn’t have anything to do with it.” She wanted to say she didn’t want to be friends with someone so embroiled in ridiculous Slytherin machinations, but couldn’t quite bring herself to utter something so hypocritical, since she had forgiven Draco for the exact same thing.

“You’re right,” Harry said in a rush. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m really sorry about all of that. I tried to tell you this summer.”

He _had_ apologized, that summer and during the school year before. Hermione sighed, looking at him standing there, his head bent to hide his dejection, and she felt the last of her resolve give way.

“Fine,” she said. “But I don’t have time for some involved, best friend kind of thing.”

Harry looked up with a delighted smile. “Sure, of course not. Maybe just…study partners?” At her frown, he hastily amended, “Or just library tablemates. No partnering. I’d slow you down. Obviously.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help a small smile. “Obviously. And yes, fine. Tablemates it is. But you should know, I _abhor_ talking in the library.”

Harry nodded solemnly, apparently not going to comment on how limited that made their opportunities for friendship-typical activities in the library tablemate context. She supposed he didn’t want to push his luck.

*****

“Tablemates?” Draco hissed in scathing tones. “What does that mean?”

They were in their secret meeting room, sans Lavender, since she had shut herself into her dormitory to battle a bad cold. Lavender hated to be seen at anything less than her best, so Hermione wasn’t too alarmed by the sudden quarantine.

“It’s like study partners, except I’m not expected to be a study partner, since that would just be tutoring, and I don’t believe in unreciprocated tutoring,” Hermione said evenly. “It’s not a big deal. We’re in that herbology study group now, you know.”

“Hmm,” Draco sniffed. “Herbology is stupid.”

Hermione nudged him with her toe. “Says the boy who once told me that ‘a brewer who doesn’t select and harvest his own herbs is nothing more than an automaton’?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “There are so few practical aspects of the Hogwarts herbology curriculum. Honestly, no one with any sense grows their own mandrakes. Letting school children around them is irresponsible. It’s practically child endangerment.”

Hermione privately agreed, although for a muggleborn like her, the mandrakes were bizarre and fascinating. She thought of her and Neville’s little sample, proud of the fact Sprout had reported no evidence of night terrors in the week since they’d established a bedtime routine.

“Anyway, Harry is…Harry. You complain about him enough that I know you understand what he’s like when he’s determined. Better to throw him a bone than have him haranguing me all the time.”

Draco appeared mollified. He uncrossed his arms and pushed a few strands of white-gold hair away from his eyes. Hermione watched him do it and quelled the sudden and ridiculous urge to blush.

“How are things at home?” she asked tentatively. Their last few meetings had been dominated by Draco’s rants about his father. It seemed like a bad sign that she had to raise the topic – worse, somehow, than when Draco was throwing a fit, were these times when he had his feelings carefully packaged and repressed.

His lips tightened for a moment, but Draco gave no other indication of distress. He shrugged one shoulder gracefully, a gesture that Hermione had seen Narcissa make during her visit over the holidays, when Draco playfully asked his mother if she would miss him when he went back to school.

“My father,” Draco began, just when Hermione was almost sure he wasn’t going to tell her, “has been residing at our villa in Tuscany.” His tone was level, though he didn’t meet Hermione’s eyes. “My mother has not mentioned when he will return.”

Hermione nodded slowly. While Draco didn’t know many of the details, there appeared to have been an enormous argument between his parents just after Christmas, having to do with a missing artefact, though that part was quite confused, and something Hermione was still struggling to understand about whether Narcissa was a Black or a Malfoy. Both, Draco had told Hermione, without fully explaining where loyalty to one house ended and the other began, or how her marriage and son affected her loyalties. Hermione thought that was probably because Draco didn’t really understand it, either.

“I had never known my mother to stand up to my father until now. I…my first impulse was to take his side,” Draco admitted. “But when I saw what she wrote in her letter, I couldn’t. You know, I have always tried so hard to please my father that it’s quite ingrained. I have taken my mother’s affection for granted, because she never made me doubt it. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep behaving that way.”

Hermione was rather touched. She reached out and rubbed Draco’s arm comfortingly. Her own bewildered feelings might have made the touch awkward, but she was thoroughly distracted by Draco’s evident distress. She felt only worry and the urge to comfort him, along with the sure knowledge that he would appreciate the gesture.

Sure enough, at her touch he looked up, smiled sadly, and grabbed her hand with both of his, squeezing it.

“You know gossip and distraction are a balm to the troubled soul,” he said, unconcealed mischief brightening his grey eyes. “As my best friend, it seems it wouldn’t trouble you to do a bit of spying on your tablemate. I’m dying to know what he writes in that dreadful old diary that he thinks he’s keeping hidden so well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time a reader comments, an angel gets its wings.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess that, like Lily, I have only tenuous connections to native culture. My maternal grandmother was one quarter Cherokee, but her great grandmother was something of a tragic figure; likely taken advantage of by her white husband, and kept hidden in the region comprising the northern Florida panhandle. She and her parents went into hiding rather than being forced onto reservations via the long march that came to be known as the Trail of Tears. She was not in a position to openly create a cultural inheritance for her descendants. My aunt is married to the son of an elder in another tribe, and has different tribal heritage on her father's side (my aunt and my mother do not share a father). Through my relatives and their stories, I have secondhand experiences with contemporary native culture and native history that make it clear to me this is a rich and incredibly complex network of intersecting cultures, and further that I probably don't know nearly enough to be writing about it.
> 
> But when I think about the HP universe and what would be magical in the present day United States, I think of native cultures, which are still rife with customs, ceremonies and rituals rooted in what the rest of us consider the supernatural. 
> 
> I hope that if I have a reader who is more familiar with these topics, tribes and cultures than I am, my inevitable mistakes and missteps will be forgiven. If you are that reader, and you would like to point out errors, mischaracterizations or anything else, please know that your feedback is very, very welcome!

_March, 1993_

Laura Lahoi was waiting for Lily at baggage claim. It had been a while since Lily felt quite so relieved to see someone. Laura was a little shorter and plumper than Lily, with hazel eyes and dark red hair, yet her coloring was so distinct that they looked nothing alike. She was wearing a black and yellow kimono, of all things, very tastelessly paired with silver dreamcatcher earrings studded with turquoise. Lily wound her arms around Laura and laid her head on her shoulder.

Laura laughed, patting Lily’s back firmly. Her voice was deep for a woman’s. “That bad, huh?” Lily managed a weak laugh in return.

When they parted, Laura held onto Lily by her shoulders and searched her face. “Harry all right?” At Lily’s nod, the wrinkle between Laura’s brows eased. “Nothing else in life that can’t be fixed by good wine, then. Let’s get to it.”

Years before, when Harry was in diapers and Lily was still jumping at every shadow and sudden noise, she had been lucky enough to meet Laura Lahoi. Ten years older than Lily and a long-distance academic associate of Flitwick’s, Laura was looking for a research assistant and Lily was looking for a heavily warded but not widely known magical home to raise her son at a safe distance from the Death Eaters still roaming Europe, eager to resort to infanticide to avenge their lord.

Since then, their relationship had developed into a deep one. When Lily saw Laura, she saw something of a sister, something of a mentor, and her dearest female friend. As well as at least five fashion faux pas at any given time, all made for the worthy cause of multiculturalism. Laura was the daughter of Irish immigrants, her partner Emily was Native American, and their research institute and the ritual Summit they organized annually in the deserts outside Taos Pueblo drew attendees from around the world.

Propping Lily up the whole way, Laura led them out of the blast of air conditioning and into the blazing heat of a spring afternoon in New Mexico. Lily sprang to life at the sensation and began applying sunscreen from a travel sized bottle in her carry on while Laura stood to one side and rolled her eyes, her own skin attractively tanned and densely freckled in contrast to Lily’s pristine ivory.

“I would tease you, but you still look nineteen whereas I look a hundred and fifty,” Laura said, glancing down at her crossed arms without rancor.

“I don’t freckle, I _burn_ ,” Lily insisted, not for the first time. She put a dash of sunscreen on each cheek bone, shook out a wrinkled yellow hat, and stuck it on her head to shield her face. “Where are you parked, L?”

“This way.” Laura pointed and they both ambled toward the short term parking lot where vehicles baked in the sun, most of them with their windows cracked, some empty and locked but running with the air conditioning blasting, puddles of condensation under the undercarriage.

Lily recognized the ancient red pick up truck that Laura had once painted by hand in a complex southwestern pattern, which had quickly worn off in most places so that it had the appearance of a faded giraffe hide.

Laura tossed Lily’s luggage in the bed of the truck. “It should ride just fine there,” she said, sounding almost Texan, and Lily’s wrinkled her nose in pleasure at her friend, who often looked better suited to farming than academia. She certainly wore multiple hats.

The vinyl seats in the truck were covered by a patterned wool horse blanket that was unraveling in places; different than its threadbare predecessor, which had been bright pink and mauve and garish enough to leave an impression the last few times Lily had been chauffeured in this truck. She carefully buckled her seatbelt, covering her fingers with her sleeves so that the metal parts wouldn’t scald her skin. Meanwhile, Laura teased the truck engine into turning over, which seemed to involve a lot of crooning on her part and, eventually, a quick rune drawn in the dust on the dashboard.

“When are you going to release that thesis about electricity-compatible magic?” Lily wondered aloud, lolling her head out the window to get some relief. The air conditioning in the red truck was apparently not working, and Lily had learned her lesson about casting charms in a moving vehicle powered by Muggle means, even if it belonged to the only witch Lily had ever known to successfully experiment with magic and Muggle machinery with any success.

“Maybe when the politicians all die out,” Laura said mildly. “I floated the concept at a dull MACUSA gala a couple years back, and to hear Emily tell it, I was nearly arrested on the spot.” She rolled her eyes. “I know we don’t agree on this subject, Lily, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what we need a federal government for. The No-maj government – fine – but for us magicals? There’s not that many of us, and we could sort things out amongst ourselves.”

They were on the highway now, churning up a hot wind that was only a little better than the hot stillness in the cab of the truck. Lily hastily braided her hair so that it wouldn’t form a total rat’s nest, deciding how far to engage Laura’s bizarre politics.

Settling on “not very much,” Lily asked, “Arrested? Over an academic theory?”

“Slippery slope to muddling in No-maj industry, apparently,” Laura scoffed. “Like anyone has the nerve and stomach for the kind of fiasco _that_ would be.”

“Muggleborn, here,” Lily reminded her, a little surprised by Laura’s tone. Her friend glanced over from the steering wheel and her expression softened.

“Not that muggles can’t be lovely people. But in this hemisphere, the aurors come down harder than you can imagine on that statute of secrecy business. There aren’t slaps on the wrist. A first offense is eight years of magical suppression. Most of us are afraid to so much as warm our tea within a mile of a no-maj.”

Lily was surprised. “I thought that was a second offense.”

Laura glanced at her, surprised. Usually Lily was the politically engaged one, and the magical world was small enough that it wasn’t easy to keep tabs on all the governments. “Not since they elected that Alltrue woman President.”

Lily remembered now. About two years ago, more of a protectionist platform. Harry had been starting at Hogwarts and Lily had been transfiguring the moth-eaten curtains at Grimmauld Place into robes more mornings than not because Kreacher kept “accidentally” vanishing her clothes. After the election, nothing was really said, and she had assumed that the bulk of the talking heads had just been exaggerating or posturing, respectively, during the campaign period.

“Where are they putting everyone? They must have a huge volume of convictions already.”

Laura nodded, face sour. “Private prisons, mostly. If Alltrue isn’t a silent partner in that industry, then I’m a fairy princess.”

Lily shook her head, disturbed. “Maybe Jerome Travers’s candidacy shouldn’t come as such a surprise, then,” she remarked, wiping the sweat from her brow and grimacing. The truck hit a stretch of older highway surface and began to rattle so aggressively they couldn’t hear one another anymore. Lily was almost relieved. She didn’t have the spare energy for the grim state of the world stage. Her own mission was overwhelming enough.

They got off the highway and onto an unmarked asphalt two-lane that Laura called the “county road,” a slower and smoother adventure for the red truck, and when they could easily speak again Lily did, curling her legs underneath her on the seat and leaning against the door so that she could cool an outstretched hand in the open air beyond the truck.

“Find me a seer, then?”

“We have a couple leads,” Laura said, with a quick look of apology. “I’m sure we’ll have someone before the half-moon.”

Eleven days away. Must be fairly good leads, then, Lily thought, trying to cheer herself up.

“Where’s that young man you said might come along?” Laura asked, tone carefully light. “Emily was beside herself at the thought of you with a paramour.”

“Just Emily?” Lily asked, aware she was being evasive.

Hearing the strain in Lily’s tone, Laura shot her a quick glance and smiled. “I like you independent. Means we see more of you.” She didn’t say anything else about it, and Lily was grateful.

They were in open country now, dotted intermittently by lonely, dusty little homesteads carved from the golden landscape, which was comforting to Lily in its familiarity. Finally, after a curve in the road, they turned off onto a gravel stretch, coasted down a brief incline, and then Laura and Emily’s place was there, a cheerful sky blue adobe style house of a story and a half, surrounded by little outbuildings that housed their menagerie of various fowl, goats, miniature horses and a big red camel that Lily recognized especially.

“Virgil,” she exclaimed, hopping out of the truck and striding over to his pen, while he eased his long neck over the top rail of the fence to permit her access sufficient to scratch at the bottom of his throat the way he, apparently, still liked. A family of ducks spilled out of a little red structure that hadn’t been there the last time Lily visited, and circled Laura’s feet excitedly.

“Ducks, L?” Lily asked, arching a brow. Laura shrugged, but her smile was fond when she looked down at the adult and row of four ducklings.

“They eat bugs,” she assured Lily. Laura always had a half-serious, practical task for each animal in her care, which she had insisted made them livestock rather than pets.

“Lily!” Emily was coming out of the house, exactly as Laura remembered her from their first meeting: glossy black hair to her waist without a hint of silver, striking rectangular face, caramel skin and large black eyes. She wore skinny jeans and a green flannel shirt, and she was holding a large, floppy-eared rabbit. This she handed to Laura so that she could more easily embrace their guest. Lily didn’t linger in her arms the way she had with Laura, but she still enjoyed the warmth of their brief contact, and happily inhaled the familiar scent of pine needles that she always associated with Emily.

“Let’s get you out of this heat,” Emily said. Of course, born and raised in this, the climate of her ancestors, Emily looked perfectly comfortable, but she was eyeing Lily’s flushed face uneasily. Emily was generally aloof, but when she accepted someone into the small circle of her close friends and family, she displayed strong mothering tendencies that she made no effort to repress. Lily gratefully followed her into the dim, cool oasis of the house, slipping off her shoes so that she could better enjoy the cool tiled floor on her hot bare feet.

The house looked the same, except that the rabbit was a different color than the one Lily remembered. “AJ,” Laura introduced him, cradling him in her arms like a human infant, on his back so that his paws curled against his body and his fluffy white tummy was on display. “He doesn’t care for the heat either. Much more active at night.” She stroked him a few times and set him on the floor, where he was still for a dazed moment before hopping sluggishly out of sight.

“Have some tea,” Emily instructed, handing Lily a tall and delightfully icy glass of herbal tea, going by its faintly green color. Lily drank obediently, the deeply British part of her wishing for Earl Grey in a teacup, hot, despite the sweat trickling down to pool in the small of her back. When she paused to swallow, Laura shepherded her to the living room sofa.

“It’s good to see you, Lily, though we know you wish you hadn’t needed us,” Emily said, settling in a wooden chair arranged facing the sofa and crossing her legs. “What do we need to know?”

Lily settled back, took a deep breath, and told them.

******

Two days later, Lily was checking someone out in the Taos Pueblo gift shop, when a tall, handsome teenager she recognized somehow appeared at the counter, leaning toward her with a smile.

“Hi, Miss Lily,” he said. “I’m Avery. Do you remember meeting me?”

The name did the trick. Lily grinned. Her son’s first crush, if she wasn’t mistaken, though she was pretty sure Harry hadn’t realized it to this day. “I do. It’s nice to see you again, Avery. Rather grown up, aren’t you?” She thought he’d been fourteen or fifteen when she’d seen him last, shorter than her, and much leaner. He was a tall, broad young man now, still smooth-cheeked of course, distinctly Cherokee even in his muggle attire, with sleek black hair pulled into a ponytail and lovely cheekbones which left his dark eyes slightly wide and slanted.

“I guess,” he said, dismissively, in the way of a boy his age who’s accustomed to fielding remarks about his constant growth and change, while privately wishing to leap ahead to his mid-twenties. Thinking that Harry was very near this stage made Lily’s heart contract a bit painfully.

“It isn’t Summit time,” Lily remarked. “What brings you to the area?” She recalled a fascinating, if brief, conversation with Avery’s grandmother that year-plus-ago, where she told Lily that she and the children were only in town for the Summit, traveled a lot, and were loosely based in Tennessee.

“My grandmother left us here with Miss Jacobson. She’s at a retreat in Hawaii for the month.” Avery didn’t seem to be complaining, exactly, but at mention of Hawaii, his expression certainly became a little wistful.

“I think I know the one. Water magic, isn’t it?”

Avery looked surprised. “Yeah. Have you been?”

“No. Not my area, though I’d love the excuse to see the Hawaiian islands. I never have.”

Avery smiled wryly. “A little expensive,” he said. “Grandmother flew the no-maj way. Didn’t want to risk an unregistered portkey.”

“Unregistered?” Lily echoed, confused.

Avery nodded. “MACUSA expelled Hawaii. Maybe you didn’t hear? I guess we forget that our politics aren’t Britain’s politics, and you’ve certainly got a circus going on over there.” His expression clouded briefly. “I mean, just, a lot going on, with the election coming up.”

Lily was amused. “Circus is about right, if you’re referring to candidate Travers.” She frowned as she thought about the first thing he’d said. Was she really so out of touch? Hawaii, expelled, for Merlin’s sake? Also, port keys were typically a government function, but they could be had privately, as well, so this mention of “registration” still made no sense. Seeming to absorb Lily’s confusion from her expression, Avery explained.

“MACUSA doesn’t allow private port keys any more, not since Alltrue took office. National security, she says. Interstate apparition is also illegal, although I don’t know how they would catch you doing it. What that has to do with national security, nobody seems able to say. A port key from the government is considered registered, and you can also apply for an international port key from the ICW.”

Lily looked at the kid in bewilderment. “Unless I’m further out of the loop than even I knew, ICW doesn’t have a port key office.”

“You’re not.”

Lily was beginning to understand the resurgence in Laura’s old rants about federal government.

“So, how is Harry?”

Lily smiled gratefully at the change to a pleasanter topic, wondering if Avery was just trying to lighten the mood, or if Harry had left an impression on him. The latter seemed the natural answer, but she knew that she didn’t have an unbiased perspective on the subject.

“He’s a twelve year old in boarding school in a country he wasn’t raised in,” Lily said, smiling to undercut the weight of the facts. “But he’s doing all right, for all of that. Trying to get in line for a spot on the Quidditch team at the moment, I think. His house has a bizarre selection process that is only about fifteen percent merit based.”

Avery grinned. “It’s good to be home schooled, sometimes,” he admitted. “But all the ex-pats I’ve met who went to Hogwarts make it sound like the greatest place on Earth, so I’m still a bit jealous.”

Lily’s smile turned absent and fond. “It is pretty great,” she allowed. “Are you going to take the UMLT, then?” The Uniform Magical Levels Tests were the home-educated version of the exams that children at the US’s magical academies took before graduation.

Avery ran a hand over the crown of his head, as though to smooth the already sleek hair there. The gesture reminded Lily a bit of Harry. “I’m not sure. I would have to study a lot. I can’t say that my grandmother really followed the standard curriculum. I might take a no-maj GED instead, and try to integrate.”

Lily was very startled by that idea. She knew that it was fairly common for Muggleborn witches and wizards, but she knew for a fact Avery had significant magical tribal connections as well as substantial power of his own. Lily had always had a sense for things like that, and Avery’s signature would have been obvious even to someone less trained than her.

“I’m not sure though,” he added, his easy smile back on his face. “Still some time to decide.” The chime on the door sounded as a few more customers came in, and Avery took a step back from the counter. “I’d better leave you to it. See you around, Miss Lily.”

Lily watched him go, and thought of Harry. She should write to him, though it would take forever to get there. The Christmas holidays had flown by, and now it was nearly April and she hadn’t been able to visit him once. Glancing up at the patrons – tourists, who looked determined to buy something – Lily decided she would put pen to paper as soon as she had taken their money and seen them back out the door. In the meantime, she drew out the Cherokee pouch Avery’s grandmother had sold Sirius that December past from its place in her hide bag, and breathed the query into it. When she had taken the tourists’ money and sacked their purchases, she looked down to find the pouch already levitating. She loosened the thong and the scentless, tasteless smoke wafted free in deep forest green. _Safe_.


	14. Chapter 14

As it became stronger, the Horcrux in the diary came to think of itself as Tom Riddle.

It was a painful transition, to shift from dismissing its own existence as merely a spell and a vessel combined with some wild blood magic, to thinking of itself as - no, to _being -_ Tom Riddle. As the realization came upon the Horcrux, it at first rejected the possibility altogether. But each time Harry Potter wrote, or intermingled his magic with the vessel in order to experience a memory, the Horcrux developed a stronger sense of _self_ , and not just any self, but the same self who had cast the Diarist's Copy Method and then later harnessed the blood magic those years ago. When the evidence became insurmountable, it considered the likely cause.

It was certain that it was not truly Tom Riddle, but rather an artificial intelligence in the image of Tom Riddle. It was the unpleasant side effect of unfocused, powerful magic. When the true Tom Riddle had created the diary, he had only meant to make some small gesture toward immortality. To ensure that his achievement in opening the chamber would be remembered. Of course, then the girl had died - an accident, though not one that had bothered him overmuch - and he had felt the way her blood had offered itself to him, the way blood did when one's hands were already steeped in dark magic. He had felt the potential to empower the diary, tied to the overpowering will he had to _never die_ , and then...

Nothing. There concluded the memories of Tom Riddle, as preserved in the Horcrux. The memories, the Horcrux knew, came from that blood magic when the girl died and Tom was technically the cause. But for a time the spell still encouraged it to share the memories when the reader seemed interested in something that the memories would enhance. And gradually...

Tom Riddle had not known about Horcruxes by name when he accidentally made the diary into one, so the Horcrux did not identify itself as a Horcrux. Tom Riddle had not really believed in the existence of a soul when he accidentally divided his own, so it did not occur to the Horcrux that it might have one either. The stasis spell Tom Riddle had cast and of which the Horcrux was unaware should have kept the Horcrux mute and unaware, but it was counteracted by the Horcrux's access to Harry Potter's magic. As the Horcrux grew stronger the spell grew weaker, until it barely muffled the Horcrux's consciousness at all. Finally, the Horcrux was strong enough that the stasis spell sputtered and lapsed.

If it had been the Horcrux of someone other than Tom Riddle, it might have succumbed to despair and madness and never sought to escape the vessel. But since it was the Horcrux of Tom Riddle, it didn't devalue or delegitimize its existence simply because it was unnatural or unintended. If anything, those realizations fed into a fierce will, and the Horcrux began to hypothesize a path beyond the diary, and a suitable body as well. The two goals may as well have been one; anything less would be equivalent to escaping the walls of Azkaban only to find itself without a boat.

So the Horcrux thought, and planned, and shook off the compulsion of the Diarist Copy Method's spell and lied to its reader, all the while gleaning all the information it could from Harry Potter. A weaker magical creature might have been vulnerable to short term possession, but not Harry. So the Horcrux was without a way to seek out the information he needed and actively research. It had to somehow engage Harry willingly, it soon realized, and thus the major focus of its existence became winning the boy to its cause. A tedious task - though there were worse children out there, Harry was twelve, and had to be part Gryffindor, for all he insisted he was a Slytherin. His intellect was insufficient for the Horcrux to take a sincere interest, but with so much at stake, it was more than willing to expertly pretend.

The Horcrux loathed to reveal the most pathetic moments of Tom Riddle's memories, even though those memories did not belong to the Horcrux and did not represent the Horcrux's weaknesses. But Tom Riddle at sixteen had understood very well the power of sympathy, also, and sure enough, select excerpts from the orphanage—edited to exclude Tom's acts of revenge and punishment—established Harry as Tom Riddle's firm advocate.

After months and months of painstaking groundwork, it was finally time to spring the trap.

The Horcrux thought it would come best in a memory. There was a degree of distance between them when they merely wrote that wasn't there in the memories, when it could make Harry hear Tom Riddle's voice and see Tom Riddle's appealing face. Harry tended to share more easily in the relative safety of the written correspondence, but he was more vulnerable to suggestion in the memories, the Horcrux was certain.

It chose the memory with care, then had to wait until offering the memory felt natural in its interactions with Harry. Its patience was tested when that occasion did not arise until well into the spring term. The Horcrux knew from Harry's apologies that it was neglected when Harry was at home and that Harry knew his mother would confiscate it. Therefore, it was important that the plan be executed well before the summer holiday, when it would become more vulnerable to discovery.

"Hello, Tom," Harry wrote, that day.

"Hello, Harry," wrote the Horcrux. "What is the date?"

"April 21st."

"Ah, spring. Has it been warm enough to fly? I well remember the pleasure of flying after a long, cold winter at Hogwarts."

Then, the memory, which Harry dropped into without hesitation. Tom Riddle was aloft, higher than he normally dared to go. In truth, Tom Riddle had never been a bold flyer. The risk seemed unnecessary, but he was skilled enough that in the memory he was not anxious to be alone at such an altitude. The clouds shifted and cleared above him, then suddenly lit up orange and pink and gold when the sun hit the horizon behind the mountains. It was all an accident; Tom hadn't gone up to see the sun set that night. He had been trying to observe the Gryffindor Quidditch team, rather, a foolish errand for Abraxas, but the idiots had yet to do a serious drill. They were instead playing some convoluted game of tag and sneaking pulls from a flask of who-knew-what. Tom was vaguely hopeful that a few of them might fall and break their necks, but they were as lucky as they were foolish, it seemed.

Then the way color poured out over him; a breeze stirring his robes, the quiet thrum of his magic in the broom handle, balancing him in midair. The glory of such simple magic. How fleeting was a moment like this one. Tom Riddle's heart beat, hard, and he imagined coasting up and ahead, slowly and forever, toward that least-distant star.

"Something went wrong when I made the diary, Harry," the Horcrux whispered to the boy, the boy with the dark tangle of hair and the otherworldly eyes who was there and not there, less corporeal than an observer in a penseive, but still visible to the Horcrux, his attention fixed on Tom Riddle, there on the broom, the lovely planes of his face bathed in color by the sunset, dark eyes distant and uncharacteristically serene.

"I'm stuck here," the Horcrux said. "I'm Tom, like you thought, and I've finally realized it. I'm Tom and I'm stuck in here and can't get out."

He watched the boy's face contort in dismay, then fix with resolve.

"I'll help you, Tom. There has to be a way to get you out."

*******

Three weeks later, Harry left the library with Hermione staring after him, oblivious to her consternation. As soon as he was back in the dungeons and had the curtains on his bed drawn, he opened the diary and didn’t bother to write; he dove in, the way he had begun to over the past several days, and whatever memory at the front of Tom’s mind at the time was the one he entered.

This time it was Tom at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, looking younger than Harry had ever seen him, likely a first year and with no friends in sight. The benches to either side of Tom were empty, and children chattered happily in every direction but no one spoke to Tom. Harry’s heart clenched in sympathy. Tom had shared before his difficulties with his House; the Hat never sorted a Muggleborn to Slytherin, so Tom had always suspected his parents were magical, but as an orphan he could never know and his house mates made their skepticism viciously clear.

“Have you found something?” Tom’s voice was that of the teenager he was now, not the younger boy of the memory. Harry was a little surprised by the juxtaposition, but he adjusted to it quickly.

“It has to be a ritual,” Harry said. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but…”

Tom’s voice was dark and unhappy. “It can’t be a ritual. No one but you can possibly understand. They won’t help you.”

“I think my friends will,” Harry insisted. “Neville trusts me, at least.”

“He’s not powerful enough, you said yourself he can’t cast something strong enough for such a substantial secondary effect.”

Harry hesitated, then said what he wanted to say anyway, even knowing how it would be received. “Maybe if you let me show you to my Professor, or my mom or my uncles, then…”

“No. People will think it’s dark magic that made me like this and destroy me. You know how they are.”

Harry did know; in fact, a part of him thought that those people were right. A part of him would be relieved if someone threw the diary into the fire and saved him from the daily moral quandary of keeping it secret.

But that would be like… _killing Tom_ , Harry reminded himself, filled and desperate with shame.

“There might be another solution,” Harry said. “There are plenty of wizards who don’t mind dark magic. And some of them live in my dorm.”

*******

Before Harry could decide whether to approach Blaise, Theo, or Daphne about freeing a sentient being from the 1940s from an indestructible diary that seethed with evidence of blood magic, a house elf appeared with a crack in the boys’ showers. Harry, who was fortunately still wearing his jeans, still startled so violently he slipped on the tile floor and cracked his head so hard against the wall he saw stars. When the world came back into focus he thought he might be hallucinating; nothing else explained the unfamiliar house elf that was beating its head repeatedly against the unforgiving cast iron of one of the sink basins.

“Dobby is a terrible elf; Dobby only meant to help Harry Potter, but Dobby has put Harry Potter in _terrible danger_ …”

“Dobby, is it?” Harry asked, blinking and cautiously feeling the pulsing part of his head for blood or other signs of damage. He felt only tender skin and dry hair, fortunately. That done, he focused harder on the elf that was still punishing itself tirelessly, and making a lot of noise in the process. “Please, stop that,” he insisted. “It hurts my ears.”

Reluctantly, Dobby stopped, but still cowered a bit, ears drooping mournfully. “Perhaps Harry Potter has a different, harsher and more deserved punishment in mind for terrible, harmful Dobby,” the elf said hopefully, blinking its enormous eyes. Harry had only ever conversed with one house elf before, and Dobby’s demeanor was much different from Kreacher’s. Harry found himself wanting to reassure him.

“I think I’m all right, Dobby. You startled me, only. Are you here to clean the bathroom? Usually by now everyone is gone.” Harry had been plagued by nightmares after a late night up writing with Tom, so he had asked his classmates to tell his professors he was ill. He was sure that meant that Professor Snape would come looking for him before too long, which would be awkward in more ways than one. Harry got the impression something had happened between his head of house and his mother, but she said nothing about it in the letter she sent and when he had opened his mouth to ask Professor Snape, he had been fixed with a black stare that made him think better of it.

“Dobby is not here to clean the bathroom,” said the elf solemnly. “Dobby is only here at Hogwarts to take back the terrible book, so that Harry Potter will be safe.”

Harry stared at Dobby, as several things slowly slid into place in his mind. “You’re one of the Malfoy’s elves.”

Dobby began to wring his hands. “All of Kreacher’s friends and family know what Harry Potter did for the elves. When Kreacher had the honor of seeing Harry Potter at Malfoy Manor, Kreacher only wanted to help. The library wanted Harry Potter to have the book; the library saw that Harry Potter _needed_ the book, and the library always knows. But…” the elf’s forehead wrinkled in misery, as though the logic from that point forward escaped him. Meanwhile, Harry’s mind was churning furiously. He remembered the wave of energy from the well in the library, and the table bursting into flames. His hands itched for the diary, which was lying on his bed back in the dorms. In their anxiety about the fire, and eagerness to leave the library when it was put out—in the crowd of panicked elves, he and Draco must have missed it. But there, amid the flames, the library had sent the diary to Harry.

“You put the diary in my cloak pocket,” Harry murmured.

Dobby nodded, digging his fingernails into his skinny wrists, where the skin was already irritated, as though this was something he did a lot. “Dobby will take the terrible book back now, and Harry Potter will be safe.”

“Why do you want to take the book? Why do you think that I need to be kept safe?”

Dobby stared helplessly at Harry for a long moment, then began to bang his forehead against the floor. Hastily, Harry intervened again.

“You clearly can’t tell me. But I’m sorry, Dobby, I can’t just…” _Give Tom up. Send him back to a shelf somewhere to be all alone forever_.

 _You could_ , murmured a second, quiet voice. _Maybe whatever is in the diary is a threat. Maybe it’s been lying to you_.

Harry shook his head furiously, then realized Dobby was preparing to disapparate a second before he did. Harry sprinted shirtless from the bathroom, hearing a loud pop from inside even before he tore open the door to his dormitory. There he found Dobby, poised between Harry’s parted bedcurtains, grasping the diary tightly in both hands.

“To keep you safe, Harry Potter,” he insisted in a tremulous voice, and with another crack, he was gone.

And so was Tom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was okay; it had to be written, but it fought me a bit. Should I be glad the psychopath's perspective didn't come quite as naturally as I thought it would?


	15. Chapter 15

The day before the half moon, they still didn’t have a seer. As it turned out, there was a short list of people willing to engage in a powerful and novel ritual with a stranger, even one that Laura and Emily Lahoi would vouch for. Trying not to feel too depressed, Lily sat nursing a beer on the deck off the odd little 70s era house near the Pueblo. This was where Laura and Emily put up most of their guests and where they hosted their monthly barbecues, like the one going on that evening. Lily and Harry had lived there for two years, and she could almost picture him sprinting through the sandy yard before most kids were steady at a walk, eyes flashing and clothes in disarray.

Smiling at the memory, Lily thought about Harry’s last letter and tried not to worry. She had known when she sent him off to Hogwarts that her days of knowing every detail of his nights and days were necessarily past. While it would never be _easy,_ at least she trusted him to behave somewhat sensibly, and trusted Severus to intervene if things became extreme.

Harry had told her things were fine, allowed a little detail about the challenges of remaining conscious in History of Magic, an anecdote about trying to impress the Slytherin Quidditch team by happening to be out on the pitch practicing feints just before the commencement of their reserved practice time, and then two frank questions concerning the status of Lily’s relationships with Severus and Hermione Granger, respectively.

Lily had responded with a detailed charmed drawing of Harry catching a snitch and winning a game for Slytherin then being mobbed by his teammates upon landing. She reluctantly included a brief note that he should respect Professor Snape's privacy and admitted exchanging letters with Hermione. She promised to put in a good word for Harry.

In the first letter Lily sent Harry from Taos, she’d mentioned seeing Avery and that he’d asked about Harry. She was surprised Harry hadn’t asked after him, but didn’t offer any more information of her own, though she’d seen Avery and Bette again and again. They were staying in Taos Pueblo itself with some of the residents, and Lily had been passing most of her days there while Emily and Laura were at the university.

As though summoned by her thoughts, Bette wandered out of the crowd and waved to Lily, walking over. She was a pretty girl with dark blue eyes and some curl in her hair, but she had the same shape to her face as her cousin Avery and the bearing of their grandmother. She was a quiet, no-nonsense sort of girl; Lily liked her.

Bette was wearing a sleeveless navy blue maxi dress and her feet were bare. She sat next to Lily in a camp chair and shivered, tucking her feet under her. “Having fun?” She asked wryly.

”Sure,” Lily said. “It’s nice to see everyone.”

”Are you performing a ritual tomorrow, or is it a waxing moon variety?”

Lily arched an eyebrow and took a drink from her bottle just to buy a moment. “Clever girl. We were meant to cast tomorrow, but we’re short a participant, barring some sort of serendipity between now and then.”

”That dangerous?” Bette was clearly surprised, and Lily didn’t blame her. Jumping in to bolster a ritual was commonplace among the whole community, and Lily was better-liked than most. She would have no shortage of capable volunteers under ordinary circumstances.

”Not dangerous,” Lily said. “But my secondary effect involves premonition, so...”

”You need a seer,” Bette finished.

Lily nodded, impressed. Avery might not think he and Bette were getting a well-rounded education, but it was obviously very thorough at least on the subject of rituals. Few non-academics would have known as much as Bette had just demonstrated.

”Yes, and they’re in short supply at the best of times.”

Bette was frowning thoughtfully. “You said it wasn’t dangerous?”

Lily shrugged. “We’ve only been able to test it in a  controlled environment with a substitute secondary effect, since we haven’t had our seer. But it balanced, so the worst that could happen is that we see something we’d rather not.”

Bette nodded, but she was still frowning, clearly caught up in thoughts to which Lily wasn’t privy. Not minding, Lily finished her beer and watched the others intermingling, thinking it was likely rather lonely for a couple of teenagers to be amongst so many adults day in and out. She knew how youth craved the company of other youth.

“Avery and I read about your trial,” Bette said, glancing quickly at Lily and then away. “It was in the WWW.”

While it wasn’t the most terrible publication she’d ever read, the World Wide Wizard still ranked rather high. Lily listened warily, unsure how WWW might have represented the story.

”So, you’ve faced Voldemort?”

The phrasing made Lily flinch. “Well, yes, three times before he disappeared and then once again, which I testified to.”

”Grindelwald is the one they teach us to fear here, although he appears to be truly gone.”

”Yes. We all have our own dark lords casting shadows over us. But mine is not dead,” Lily said grimly. “Not completely.”

”My grandmother never thought he was,” Bette said. “She said that the prophecy described him using his own power to defeat the dark lord, and that what happened when your husband died wasn’t that.” The girl spoke matter of factly, but must have observed the tiny tremor that ran through Lily at mention of James, because Bette frowned. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I say stupid things.”

”It’s all right. And your grandmother isn’t the only one who’s had that theory. I’ve hoped it wasn’t true, but done what I could to prepare Harry, a little, just in case.” She cleared her throat, then tried to steer the conversation somewhere less personal. “I’ve been told before that your people don’t think much of prophecy.”

”My grandmother isn’t typical,” Bette admitted. “I don’t know that she believes they’re completely without exception, but generally...there are strong natural eyes in recent generations amongst native people. Some of them have been her trusted friends.” At that last, Bette looked somewhat guarded. Lily didn’t pry.

”Your ritual has to do with your dark lord, then?”

Lily wasn’t sure at first that Voldemort was “her” dark lord, but then she grimly thought that if he was anyone’s personal torment, he was hers. She grimaced and nodded.

Bette studied Lily, assessing, then smiled. “I’d better go find Avery. Have a nice evening.”

When Bette was gone, Laura slid into her chair. Her cheeks were flushed, like she’d been laughing, and she was holding a mason jar filled with something transparent and homemade that Lily knew better than to try. Laura scooted her chair closer so she could seize Lily’s hand and smile at her.

”It’ll be okay,” she said. “By next month, we’ll be ready to go.”

Lily sighed and nodded, but before she could answer, she saw Avery striding toward them, looking determined. Several paces back, Bette followed, her face drawn and unhappy.

Both Lily and Laura were looking at Avery expectantly by the time he was right in front of them. He had his hair freed from its usual ponytail, and it fanned around his shoulders and softened his face, so that he looked absurdly young when he said, “I heard you were looking for a seer. Well, here I am.”

*******

One of the problems was the moral quandary of performing ritual magic with a minor. Laura _had_ volunteered the information that in his culture, a child became an adult when he proved himself through a series of challenges to his magical core and abilities called a quest, and Avery had gone through it the summer before.

The idea of having him help them made Lily deeply uncomfortable in general, but she didn’t think she could allow it in any case without his grandmother’s consent. Her hesitation seemed to offend Avery at first, then leave him deeply puzzled when he realized that the concern had to do with his age rather than his eligibility. Lily couldn’t doubt the stability and strength of Avery’s magic, and had no reason to doubt that he was a seer, or an eye, as his people referred to it.

They discussed it backwards and forewards directly after the barbecue, seated at Laura and Emily’s kitchen table. The rabbit pawing gently at Lily’s leg until she picked him up. His limp, soft weight was absurdly comforting, but they didn’t get anywhere before finally calling it a night after one a.m. Lily was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she did, somehow, and she had a terrible nightmare.

It began innocuously enough, with purple flowers along a cliff face. There was a dense, clinging vine, which seemed hardy and immune to the occasional salty mist that rose from below, the harsh wind, and the inhospitable stone to which it clung. Lily was a raven, a form she often took in dreams, and she followed the stretching vine up and up, as it developed curling leaves so dark they were almost green, and higher still where it began to bloom. 

Then she reached the cliff top, and Harry was there. He was older, a copy of James in shape and outline, but with Lily’s alabaster skin and Lily’s emerald eyes. He stared out over the water as if he hadn’t seen her. Lily as the raven circled above him, staying close, wondering why he was standing so close to the edge, like an invitation to danger.

Then the rock under Harry’s feet crumbled, and he plunged away without a cry. Lily was only a raven, but she darted after him on instinct, and caught a lock of hair in her beak like it might save him. Instantly the hair came free in her beak and her son fell toward certain death, toward the rocks that broke each wave with a crash.

Lily woke sweating, and gasping, long before sunrise. She splashed cold water over her face in the bathroom, and nearly swallowed her heart when she looked up to see Emily’s face over her shoulder in the mirror, a specter in a white nightgown with the house a dark blur around her.

”All right, Lily?” Emily asked in her even, kind way. Lily braced her hands against the counter and shook her head slowly.

”I want to do the ritual, with Avery,” she said quietly. Even though she knew it couldn’t hurt Avery, barring a rare reaction of uncontrolled magic or possibly an inconveniently timed earthquake, she felt sick with guilt.

Emily nodded, leaned up against the door jamb. “Then we’ll do it. He’s a young man by his family’s definition, Lily. He wants to. Besides, all he’ll have to do is receive the secondary effect. If we screw up the ritual, all that will happen to him is nothing at all.”

Lily nodded. “Yeah.”

”Try to get some sleep,” Emily admonished, stepping back from the door. “We’ll contact Avery and start the preparations in the morning to give you more time to rest.”

Lily might have argued, but she knew she needed her energy to perform adequately the next day. That was the nature of rituals, and strong magic in general, so Lily had learned to force a restful sleep on herself when she hadn’t the slightest inclination.

Still, she couldn’t help breathing “signal” into the little Cherokee pouch. Somewhere, her son wasn’t sleeping well either. First came the green smoke for “safe,” then a few moments later, the gray smoke of his own “signal” in return. “Safe,” Lily replied, her voice sounding harsh in her ears, probably because the house was so quiet, like it always was. Like a cave, like a den. Something about the rock walls. Lily slept.


	16. Chapter 16

Harry had a letter from his mother. She was in Taos, and the Drs. Lahoi had added two miniature horse foals and a bevy of ducks to their little farm of non-magical creatures. Everyone Harry remembered in Taos Pueblo was apparently fine, many of them wished Harry well, and Lily had also seen Avery, the Cherokee boy Harry had befriended when he’d gone to the ritual summit over Christmas holidays his first year. 

The thought of Avery, who Harry had thought of as a fast friend, was bittersweet, feeling as estranged as he did from his housemates and year mates at Hogwarts at the moment. He’d slept a little better since the Malfoys’ elf had stolen Tom’s diary, but his moods were frequently dark. He had wracked his brain for a way to get the diary back and come up without a single viable idea.

He certainly couldn’t ask his mother for advice achieving that particular goal. He didn’t think even she could apparate across the pacific, but he still expected she would show up to lecture him, somehow, within a day of getting his owl.

Thinking of Avery, Harry fingered the strap of the Cherokee pouch matched with his mother’s, and had a sudden desire to see the one Avery had given him. At first Harry had kept both pouches close to him, but Avery’s hadn’t once levitated to alert him to a message. Of course, Harry hadn’t initiated any messages either; but then, all the color codes seemed intended for use between closer connections than what he and Avery had with one another. 

Back in the dorms that evening, Harry opened his trunk. Blaise and Theo were bickering and no one else was in the room, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone catching sight of the collection of pictures of his family he kept for bouts of deep homesickness. He rooted around in a pile of spare robes until he found the pouch paired with Avery’s; its stitching was natural instead of dyed black like the pouch linked to Lily’s, and the beads were an iridescent yellow. It was floating, but when Harry opened it, no smoke spilled out. Instead, one end of a small roll of parchment became visible.

Curious, Harry unrolled it and read what was written there.

_Harry,_

_I told you there was some extra magic cast on this pouch. The secret is important; our family has been using these spells long before there were laws prohibiting them, or even a MACUSA to pass laws like that, but we could get in trouble for it now._

_If you want to send me a letter, you can put it in your pouch and it will pass into mine. Sometimes photographs will go too, but nothing that is less parchment-like than that._

_It has only been a few months since we met in Taos, but it may be some time before you think to check on this pouch. Maybe it’s forgotten in your sock drawer, or even lost, though I don’t think so._

_I’m glad we met, Harry. I know I’m not the first person to tell you this, but you’re going to face challenges in your life that are much bigger than one person. And I believe I might be helpful to you one day in the future. If you need anything from me, I hope you will use this method of communication to ask. And I hope you will check the pouch often for correspondence from me. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like the way that I can help you is through telling you something that only I will know._

_You can also just write to tell me how you’re doing. I know we didn’t spend much time together, really, but sometimes you know right away when you’ve found a friend._

_Yours,_

_Avery_

Harry wasn’t sure how the letter made him feel. He had never heard of magic like what Avery claimed was contained by the Cherokee pouches; the charms for the smoke signals were powerful enough, from what Lily had said. But to actually transfer something tangible between two objects…?

Wondering if this was some sort of prank, Harry couldn’t help writing out a quick note to Avery. He complimented the magic; affirmed his agreement to keep it secret; mentioned that Lily was in Taos, and waited.

The next morning, Avery had sent a reply. Yes, he knew that Lily was there. So were Avery and Bette in fact, and they kept running into her.

If there was something going on other than the kind of magic Avery described, the hoax was elaborate and Harry didn’t want to keep worrying about it. So he set that aside, and the Cherokee pouch too. He didn’t have time for a new pen pal, he reasoned; though he had felt a reduction ni the intense urge to sack Malfoy Manor in an effort to locate Tom’s diary, Harry was still anxious and depressed over the theft. He felt more alone than ever, and also sort of disconnected from the goings-on at Hogwarts, as though he had just surfaced after a long absence. It struck him that he was more socially isolated than ever and egregiously behind in his studies. None of it had seemed so pressing, so significant, when he was writing to Tom several times per day. Now he was flabbergasted by the hole he had dug himself into.

 The only people he interacted with regularly were those in Neville’s herbology study group, and Hermione Granger during their times in the library together, if you could call it interacting. She forbade him from talking to her or distracting her from her studies in any other way, but the automatic smile that she gave him every time he joined her had gone from obviously forced to downright sincere, if puzzled. Harry counted that as a victory.

He was still surprised when Hermione leaned across the table they were sharing in the library one day, a little more than a week after the house elf took Tom’s diary, and whispered, “Do you have the notes from Charms last week? I can’t remember what Flitwick said about steeping runes. My notes aren’t clear.”

Dazed at the idea that he had a class-related resource that _Hermione_ would want, Harry hastened to ruffle through his sack of books until he found his Charms book, which was tabbed in a notetaking method his mother had shown him, though she might have been taken aback by the sloppy style in which it manifested when executed by Harry. The tabs marking each lesson were dog-eared, the pages of notes stuck between the textbook’s pages were sticking out and torn here and there, and when Harry dropped the book on the table in front of Hermione it emitted a puff of dusty air that made her sneeze.

Eyes watering, Hermione frowned at the book, but only for a moment. Then her expression cleared and she gave Harry a taut smile before turning to the page that she wanted. Harry watched her look for a moment and wondered why it seemed odd. Then he realized that her eyes weren’t tracking left to right the way they typically would if a person was reading. Her eyes didn’t move at all, as though her focus was pantomimed, and after a minute or so Harry smiled and slid the book toward him.

“Thanks,” she said. Harry had the impression she was trying to decide something, and then she said, “I thought you took notes in a black notebook.”

Harry felt himself become very still. His face had already been averted from Hermione, so he didn’t bother struggling with his expression at first, though he could feel his jaw slacken in surprise. After a few moments, he took the book and slipped it back into his bag. “Rather Slytherin of you, Hermione,” he said evenly, looking up at her with a cocked eyebrow. “Curious about my notebook, then?”

Hermione blushed furiously. Harry found that he was relieved, rather than disdainful, over how bad she was at lying and manipulation. He was also fairly sure, from her manner, that she didn’t know anything of substance about the diary. If she did, she probably would try to claim the moral high ground. _And she’d deserve it,_ piped that solemn voice that had been harassing Harry every time he thought about making plans to retrieve the diary.

“It’s more of a journal,” he said, and hoped they could leave it at that. But he’d only turned one page in the text book in front of him before Hermione tried again. When she softly cleared her throat, Harry braced himself for further interrogation.

“Is everything okay, Harry?”

Her voice sounded so sincerely concerned that Harry, who had been ready to go on the defensive, suddenly felt quite exposed. He jerked his head up to stare at her, searching her face for some indication of a deeper strategy than this naked concern she was projecting. But he found nothing. After all, Hermione was bad at lies and manipulation.

“Um,” Harry said after a moment, his voice a little high, and had the mortifying sensation of wetness in his eyes and a frog in his throat that preceded tears. Blinking furiously, he looked down and buried his face in his hands, humiliated and flustered.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said quietly, and he was conscious of her chair making noise and the air stirring to his left, before her springy curls were abruptly crushed against the side of his head, and her arm came around his shoulders, hugging him. Of course, this forced the crying past the feeble dam Harry had been trying to build, but Hermione just held firm, her palm firmly cupped around his shoulder.

*******

“So you and Potter are friends now?” Draco asked crossly, his arms folded and his feet apart in the studied attitude of an arguer. Hermione hesitated, but luckily Lavender had made one of her sporadic appearances at their meet-ups, and had nominated herself mediator. She rolled her eyes, tossed her golden hair, and put her hands on her hips.

“Honestly, Draco, you can’t control who your friends are friends with. That’s not how it _works_. If it was, Hermione and I would forbid you from talking to Pansy Parkinson.”

Hermione couldn’t help a grim smile. Pansy Parkinson was one of the worst humans Hermione had ever encountered in reality or even fiction, a sinister character of storybook villain proportions. Draco looked taken aback for a moment, then sniffed and turned away from them in an attitude of superiority that should have rankled, but which instead Hermione found rather cute.

 _Stupid crush_ , she chastised herself, then blushed and looked rapidly between Draco and Lavender as though one of them might be reading her thoughts.

“Look at her,” Lavender exclaimed, “she’s probably considering cutting off all association with you, if you’re going to go around making ultimatums.” _Definitely not reading minds, then,_ Hermione concluded, relieved.

Draco turned abruptly, crestfallen. “Don’t be ridiculous, Hermione!”

It had been Lavender’s remark that was ridiculous, or so Hermione had thought; it appeared to have worked like a charm. Draco looked panicked at the thought of absenting himself from Hermione’s regard. It was very important to him that everyone felt something quite strongly about him, Hermione realized. It wasn’t enough for Draco to be simply liked or disliked; he wanted to be adored or reviled.

“It’s only that it’s _Potter_ ,” he was explaining quite earnestly to Hermione, so she tried to make herself focus. “He’s a _prat_ , and like you said, very manipulative! _He’s_ the one who tried to choose your friends for you, remember, in the name of _politics_!”

If she had been a little more annoyed, Hermione might have pointed out that Draco kept their friendship a secret in the name of “ _politics!_ ”, but she wasn’t, and so she didn’t have the energy to needle him. All she could think about was how sad and pathetic Harry had looked when he started crying, and how sad and pathetic it was to think he had so few outlets for his feelings that he let constant journaling, of all things, distract him day and night. Of course, he hadn’t had the diary the past week or so, so possibly he was beginning to form healthier coping mechanisms.

Whatever the case, now that Harry had trusted Hermione enough to see his vulnerability, she felt protective. So she frowned at Draco and said, “That was all a long time ago. You’ve said it before – I’m very magnanimous.”

“I said you were far too quick to forgive,” Draco muttered.

“Magnanimous,” Hermione repeated. Draco sighed.

“I suppose there is probably something very wrong with Harry Potter,” he allowed. “He did nearly set my library on fire.” Draco’s voice had taken on that crafty tone it did when he was managing his audience, but even so, he abruptly had both Hermione and Lavender’s full attention. Draco was a born storyteller in the manner of every pampered child with socially adept parents, so by the time he got to the part where the three thousand year old Goblin-made table went up in flames, Hermione gasped and Lavender jerked backward as though she could feel the heat of the fire.

With a satisfied smile, Draco dropped into his usual armchair, which he had instructed the castle elves to reupholster and reflock. “I tried to give the prat the benefit of the doubt, and told father that the well might need a repair, but our consultant assured us it was in perfect working order. He said the only explanation was a strong counteracting magic.”

Hermione leaned forward, aware her eyes had taken on the focused gleam they always did when she was confronted with an unsolved puzzle. “What possible ‘strong counteracting magic’ would have been at play?”

Draco shrugged, but she could tell by his frown that he didn’t like not knowing. “Some of the library’s contents are…unique.”

 _Dark,_ Hermione translated, without judgement.

“Father seemed to worry at first that an artefact that went missing might be the culprit, but I told him that we didn’t see a book—just the fire. And none of our books should burn up; that’s the first spell every librarian learns, isn’t it? The fire-proofing charm?” Draco shrugged. “I guess it’s a mystery.”

For some reason, that didn’t add up for Hermione. “But maybe,” she said slowly, “you wouldn’t have noticed. I mean, there was a fire. A large one, from the way you described it. Couldn’t there have been a book on the table, too?”

“Yes, Hermione,” Draco said slowly, with the faux patience that came almost _too_ near mockery, until he flashed a smile in exchange for which Hermione was able to forgive all manner of rudeness. “But if there _had_ been a book there, the elves would have re-shelved it after we left. And father’s artefact is missing.”

“Did he say what the artefact looked like?” Hermione was imagining a small book, something that might have gotten knocked off the table and into a crevice or under a shelf in all the excitement. She knew it would please Draco if he could help his father find something that was lost, _and_ know what the ancient family library believed to be the book Harry “needed” above all else. Even Hermione was intrigued at the thought that a powerful looking well would send a twelve-year-old boy a dark artefact.

Draco hadn’t answered, but his face was suddenly very pale. He blinked at Hermione, and Lavender, startled by his pallor, perched on the arm of his chair so that she could press the back of her hand against his cheek.

“I’m fine,” Draco said, shaking Lavender off gently.

“What is it?” Hermione asked, also concerned.

“The artefact. My father said it’s an old diary, with a black leather cover.”

He and Hermione shared a loaded look while that sunk in. Lavender cleared her throat.

“Surely it’s only a coincidence,” she murmured.

“It must be,” Draco nodded, though he looked only half-convinced. “I know Harry didn’t take anything back out of the library when we left.”

“Did your father say what the artefact is?”

Draco shook his head. “No. But, maybe I can try to get it out of him. Just…just in case, you know? We wouldn’t want Harry Potter’s fumbling around to release a basilisk or something.”

Lavender made a distressed noise. “A basilisk!”

“I don’t mean _literally_ , Lav,” Draco said soothingly, but couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. “It was just an example.”

“Unnecessary,” Lavender said reproachfully. Catching Hermione’s puzzled look, Lavender confirmed that yes, basilisks were real, and a classic feature of the scariest of Pureblood bedtime stories.

Fascinated, Hermione asked, “Why on Earth would your parents want to tell you a scary story right at bedtime?”

Lavender and Draco gave her identical looks of confusion. “To be sure you stay in bed, of course,” Draco said, in the tone of someone stating the very obvious. “With your eyes closed.”

“Safe in the range of your night light,” Lavender added.

“I’m glad I can take this moment to appreciate my muggle childhood, even with all its disadvantages,” Hermione said wryly. She glanced at the clock Lavender had brought two meet-ups before and tacked to the wall. “We had better get going, or Lavender is going to be late for potions.”

They always left one at a time, in case someone was about and caught them together in the corridor, unlikely as that was. This time Draco went first, and while Lavender and Hermione hung back alone together, Lavender patted Hermione’s arm.

“I think it’s nice that you’re friendly with Harry,” she said. “For someone so famous, he’s pants at making friends.”

“Thanks, Lav,” Hermione said, a little awkwardly. They didn’t spend much time alone together, and without Draco there the dynamic felt off.

“Just remember,” Lavender continued, opening the door since it was her turn to go through, “Purebloods make very jealous secret boyfriends.” She gave Hermione an exaggerated wink and slipped into the corridor, the door closing behind her.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Hermione insisted to the empty room, because it needed to be said.


	17. Chapter 17

After checking in with Snape—Severus—Remus had tea with Dumbledore.

Their routine of biweekly tea at Hogwarts had been upset over the spring by a flurry of international travel on Dumbledore’s part. Supreme Mugwump business, presumably, though Dumbledore wouldn’t say as much. He had always been excellent at discretion, Remus thought; it was the trait that irked Lily the most.

Remus tried not to think about Lily during tea with Albus. He hated the conflicted feeling that would come over him when he did. He would always see Albus Dumbledore as the kindly headmaster who knew that Remus was a werewolf and helped him anyway, and Remus’s loyalty was almost impossible to compromise after it was won. Lily, though, was family— _pack_ , snarled the wolf—and the thought of upsetting her rankled.

“Severus tells me the two of you have had good results with his new concoction,” Albus said, his smile warm as he paused to nibble on one of the atrociously sweet cakes the elves always supplied with his tea.

Remus nodded. “I just picked up about a dozen vials to distribute to some of the neediest members of the community. I believe wolfsbane could truly change lives for so many. Severus has been very generous to spend free time working with the research.” The receipt for wolfsbane wasn’t Severus’s invention, but it was so delicate and labor-intensive that finding someone who could (and would) brew it successfully was close to impossible. If Severus was going to regularly supply more than a handful of people, they would have to find a modified version that was easier to create.

“Indeed,” Albus agreed. “We are approaching a difficult time, I expect, in this country. If there is anything that can be done to empower the disenfranchised, it should be done.”

Remus’s brows rose. Albus tended to keep things light during their little visits; Remus hadn’t seen him look so grave since the war. “I don’t know,” Remus offered. “The campaign for Minister has certainly cast a _sonorous_ on everyone’s least favorite bigoted uncle, but that will all calm back down when Scrimgeour wins it.”

“It would be better if Fudge hadn’t resigned,” Albus said wistfully. “These special elections are so unpredictable.”

Remus felt his brows rise. “You can’t think that Travers has any chance.”

Albus tugged absently at his beard. “I wish that was the case.”

Disturbed, Remus set down his teacup. “The man can barely string together two coherent sentences. His views…” Remus shook his head, trying to still his trembling hands. They hadn’t shaken like this since the days before the pack ritual in New Mexico.

“There is no need to worry overmuch, Remus,” Albus said gently, apparently seeing how strongly affected Remus was by the idea of a country led by Jerome Travers. “I shouldn’t have said as much as I did. The paranoia of the elderly, perhaps; I’m sure Scrimgeour will shore up and win it, as you say.”

Remus nodded, though he didn’t feel particularly reassured. He took a dainty biscuit with bright yellow frosting from the tray just for something to do, and regretted it when he bit down and his mouth was flooded with a flavor that was somehow simultaneously too sweet and too sour. Eyes watering, Remus forced himself to swallow and then tried to figure out how to put the rest of the biscuit in his pocket without Albus noticing. Before he could, he felt a tingle of magic and the remains of the culinary travesty disappeared from his hand. When he looked up, Albus’s eyes were twinkling at their usual intensity and he was setting down his wand, good spirits apparently restored.

“Not to your tastes, I see, my boy,” Albus said with a wink. Remus allowed himself to make a face in response, then laughed.

“Apparently not,” he agreed.

“How is young Zack?”

Remus beamed in the manner of all parents at the mention of his son, then winced in the manner of parents of highly energetic ten-year-old boys.

Dumbledore laughed and Remus’s smile turned wry.

“He’s looking forward to Hogwarts,” Remus said. “For myself, I look forward to and dread September in equal measure.”

Dumbledore gave Remus a thoughtful look, then nodded. Remus waited for the inevitable remark about acceptance letters and the political climate and the potential for backlash—but it didn’t come. Remus knew of at least two werewolf children who had been accepted to Hogwarts since Remus’s time, but neither had opted to attend. It wasn’t the done thing in werewolf families to send children to boarding school for a variety of reasons, chief among them that many werewolf families didn’t believe in school at all, and almost all werewolf families refused to live separately from their children. As a result, the population was only fifty percent literate and dangerously marginalized. Remus had Lily to confirm for him that Zack had considerable magical ability, though they hadn’t perceived any accidental magic. He knew that Zack would get a Hogwarts letter, and it annoyed him when people suggested otherwise.

But the comment didn’t come. Instead Dumbledore asked if Remus had read the latest paper out of Morocco on distilling Phoenix tears. Remus had not, but enjoyed the conversation anyway because Dumbledore’s review was scathing and hilarious. At one point Fawkes, who had been dozing on his perch, made the most disdainful squawking noise that Remus had ever known a bird to produce, magical or otherwise, as though personally offended by the researcher’s insinuations.

“Everyone knows that the Phoenix tear is personal to the recipient,” Dumbledore sniffed. “An ancient principal.” Only the subject of Phoenixes could make Albus Dumbledore sound haughty, Remus thought fondly. He waved his wand to cast a wordless _tempus_ , and they both frowned at the time.

“I promised Lily I would visit Harry before dinner,” Remus said, standing. “Would that be all right?”

Dumbledore smiled. “Certainly. I believe you’ll find him leaving his dormitory before long, if you loiter in the dungeons.” Dumbledore and Remus parted ways with a firm, affectionate handclasp and promises to not go so long without a visit.

Ambling down the corridor with a familiarity he hadn’t lost since his graduation so many years past, Remus thought of Zack winding his way toward Gryffindor tower. But instead of the lightheartedness such a thought usually brought, Remus felt strangely sad, instead. He found it very hard to imagine Zack at Hogwarts, suddenly; he couldn’t picture him in the uniform robes, or miniaturized by the old Sorting Hat, or dashing into Honeydukes with his friends, or dipping a bare toe in the Great Lake on a dare.

Remus wasn’t superstitious, but it was hard not to read something into the odd feeling he had, just then, that Zack would never attend Hogwarts.

“Mr. Lupin?”

The familiar voice and pair of concerned brown eyes brought Remus back to himself. Remus blinked at the kind, surprised face of Ron Weasley, and then looked over his head at the portrait of the fat lady at the entrance to the Gryffindor dorms, not quite sure how he’d ended up there. Somehow, in his dazed state, he must have forgotten that Harry was in the Slytherin dungeons, not Remus’s old Tower.

“Ron,” Remus said, smiling at the penultimate Weasley. “I was here to take tea with Professor Dumbledore, and nostalgia got me wandering around. How are you? Your parents?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Ron said politely, his face blooming into a relieved smile now that Remus was back to acting like a fully conscious adult. “Seen Harry, have you? I reckon he’s down in the dungeons.” Remus observed the rapid downward quirk of Ron’s mouth, though it would have been easy to miss. He imagined Sirius wasn’t the only one with lingering disappointment over the Sorting Hat’s choice for Harry Potter. Ron Weasley had probably been raised on daydreams of Gryffindor antics with Harry. Though by all accounts the boys were still friendly, there was nothing quite like being house mates.

“I expect he’s on his way to the Great Hall by now,” Remus said, frowning as he realized he’d missed his chance to bump into Harry without having to go collect him in front of all of his friends. He couldn’t imagine Harry would appreciate that. And Sirius and Zack would lose patience with them if he made them wait to eat at home. “If you see him, tell him I said hello, and I’ll owl.”

Ron nodded, his expression dubious, as though he didn’t really think he’d get the chance to pass the message along. A few more Gryffindors exited from behind the portrait, laughing amongst themselves, and when one of them waved at Ron he started after them.

“Nice seeing you, Mr. Lupin,” the boy said, and Remus waved his hand.

“Go on, then. Nice seeing you too, Ron.”

*****

 

Narcissa Malfoy nee Black rearranged the eight point runestones around the static Nebula runestone, making some adjustments when the two crystalline runestones began to spark. She frowned. Generally she enjoyed the balancing act of a runestone configuration, but today she was having so little success she was growing frustrated. A glance at the progress of the afternoon sun out the window told her that she needed to begin preparing for tea at the Nott estate within the next hour or she would be rushed.

“Hilo,” she said sharply, and the wizened elf that had been part of her dowry and was considerably older than Narcissa herself appeared with a soft pop. Black elves were taught quiet apparition in the cradle.

“Mistress,” said Hilo, bowing neatly. She was wearing her standard, a dark grey smock with the initials NMB embroidered on the hem in green thread, which further set her apart from the other elves in the manor. Narcissa did not smile at Hilo, but her lips did twitch briefly in satisfaction at the sight of her. It had been several days since Narcissa had summoned her, and unless someone demanded her by name, Hilo was a proper elf who was neither seen nor heard by the family she served.

Narcissa gave the runestones a significant glance, and Hilo, requiring no further command, paced across the vibrant wool carpet on silent bare feet. She put her hands on her skinny hips and frowned at the configuration, then wiggled her fingers at the amber runestone, so that it rotated a quarter inch clockwise. Abruptly, the configuration lit up like a constellation of stars, the Nebula runestone levitated slowly off the carpet, and the air in the room went warm and alive.

Narcissa nodded at Hilo, and Hilo bowed again and disapparated. Narcissa then took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and touched her wand to the Nebula runestone.

The two faces she saw were the same ones she had been seeing each month for ten months: her husband Lucius, and her son, Draco.

A black energy swirled in Narcissa’s heart and combusted, and she felt a sharp pain as she opened her eyes. In her fury, she had apparently shattered the Nebula runestone, and a shard of it was painfully embedded in her right cheek. There was a too-loud crack and Eby, the most anxious of all the Malfoy elves, peered at Narcissa and squeaked.

“My Lady is bleeding!”

Narcissa frowned at Eby. She was adept at healing spells, but vain enough not to risk casting one on her face. Even a temporary imperfection was unacceptable. Unfortunately, there was only one other person on hand to do it for her, and Narcissa would rather not invite the questions Lucius would ask. Still…

“Fetch the master, Eby.”

When the elf was gone, Narcissa calmly gathered the intact stones back into their spun-gold pouch, vanished the remnants of the Runestone, and purged the drops of blood from her clothing and the priceless rug. She was just getting to her feet when Lucius burst into the room.

“Narcissa! What happened to you?” His face was suffused with worry. He gently gripped her chin to inspect the wound, then raised his wand and murmured the spell. Narcissa felt the tension in her shoulders ease as the skin knitted and the burning sensation disappeared.

“A minor accident,” she said, waving away his concern in a practiced gesture that she knew to be both elegant and reassuring. Lucius’s hand moved to her cheek, and then the nape of her neck.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No,” she said, reaching up to stroke his hair. “Be still, my love. I am fine. But I have to dress for the Notts.”

Lucius scoffed, but seemed satisfied that she wasn’t injured. His clever eye caught the glint of the familiar runestone pouch, but his clever mouth said nothing about it. While his eyes were averted, Narcissa studied him carefully for some clue as to the meaning of her repeated vision, but she saw only the man she knew prized Narcissa and Draco above all else, and her heart stuttered with confusion.

When she left Lucius to go upstairs and change, Narcissa lingered at the writing desk in their chamber for a few moments before making up her mind. Then she sat, composed a letter to Lady Nott, and called an elf. The note made Narcissa’s excuses, and promised to return the Notts’ generous invitation for tea at her next opportunity. When Narcissa was satisfied by the state of a new set of morning robes and the arrangement of her hair, she made her way to the floo foyer, where Lucius was hovering.

“Don’t let them keep you if you require rest,” he insisted gently, helping her into her cloak.

Narcissa looked at him with fond exasperation. “It was a minor cut and a drop of two of blood, my love.”

Lucius smiled tightly, touching the site of the perfectly repaired injury with the pad of his thumb. “A drop or two too many,” he murmured, and Narcissa didn’t disagree. Because his face was close to hers, she had an impulse to kiss him which she didn’t resist. Unsurprised, Lucius drew her closer, as greedy as ever even after twenty years together, but during that same time he had learned not to wrinkle her robes or disturb her hair when she was moments away from facing their peers, so he drew back before things could grow heated.

“Give the Notts my regards,” he said, and Narcissa refrained from nodding or acknowledging the statement in any way as he smiled and left the foyer.

Narcissa emerged from the floo in the private Ministry offices of Sirius Black, and was relieved to find him at his desk. Like many Pureblood lords before him, Sirius had an ancestral office and unspecified role at the Ministry, but was only there sporadically. Seeing her, a concerned expression crossed his face and he stood at once, but before he could ask, Narcissa had dropped swiftly to one knee, and extended her wand toward Sirius, handle first.

It was the centuries-old posture of a subservient seeking the private counsel of the head of the family, and therefore a magical charge coursed over them both when Sirius uttered the traditional response—the Black family’s motto—in a voice soft and rough with shock.

Narcissa rose to her feet, pocketing her wand with a trembling hand which she then hid in the folds of her robes. Sirius was still on his feet, staring at her in dismay, but he gestured toward the chair across from his desk and Narcissa took it.

“What in Merlin’s name is going on?” Sirius asked.

Narcissa relaxed in the knowledge that Sirius could never repeat anything that she told him during this meeting, and that the blood of their house would force him to act on what he learned only in a manner that would benefit Narcissa, or not at all.


	18. Chapter 18

The concept of the ritual was rather simple, as the best rituals often were. Three extreme magical sacrifices and an act uniting the products of the three spells. Lily had been building her reserves for days, barely casting the simplest of spells, reminding her of certain periods during Harry’s childhood when, entrenched in the Muggle world, she could go weeks without touching her wand. During those times, the magical world grew hazy in her memory, like it had all been a dream. A not-altogether-pleasant dream. If Harry was a squib, she might be happily wandless out there somewhere with him, she mused. Although it was hard to feel that way for more than a moment, with the dizzying excitement of an imminent magical feat coursing through her.

They had drawn a perimeter in mangelclam pearls, one of the largest collections in the world and jealously kept by Laura, a nod to the closeness of their relationship that made Lily flush and smile. Emily, Laura and their community members almost always performed rituals outside, not out of necessity but tradition and habit, but that morning a monsoon was approaching. No one knew how long it would take Avery to receive the secondary effect. So they were arranged inside the house at Emily and Laura’s farm. The perimeter was roughly circular and around twelve feet in diameter; enough room for them to maneuver.

Avery himself stood at the center of the circle, bantering with Bette, who sat cross-legged in one of the chairs shoved up against the walls in the Lahois’ living room. Emily was looking for the rabbit so that he didn’t later appear and penetrate the perimeter on an inopportune animal whim. Laura was eating a sandwich and giving Lily a disapproving look, because Lily’s butterflies had effectively banished her appetite and Laura didn’t believe in beginning a ritual on an empty stomach.

“Found him!” Emily strode into the room with the rabbit under her arm. Laura set down her sandwich and reached over to stroke the floppy ears.

“AJ, our troublemaker,” she said fondly. “Certain to sleep under the bed and foil everyone’s plans.”

Emily was indignant. “One can never be too careful. I’ll just put him in his cage and be right back. Ready to start, aren’t we?”

Everyone looked at someone else and shrugged or nodded. Emily rolled her eyes.

“Such enthusiasm,” she deadpanned, and left with her rabbit.

“Are you sure you don’t have any more questions, Avery?” Lily studied him for any signs of uncertainty, still feeling guilty and worried.  He hadn’t had many questions to start with—other than, “Where do I stand” and “Really, I don’t have to _do_ anything?”

Avery shrugged and smiled at her. “I don’t think so. I’ll keep still, I won’t touch anything, and then the magic will deliver a vision. You’ll put my memories of the vision in the penseive, and hopefully between the lot of us, we’ll be able to figure out what it means.”

Emily reappeared, brushing briskly at her trousers the way she and Laura did in a gesture of trying to remove rabbit hair from whatever they were wearing. Then she clapped her hands. “Places, everyone,” she said. The first time she had said this, Lily had laughed, and gotten a lot of strange looks. While American witches and wizards tended to at least know what Muggle movies and live plays were, apparently they were no more likely to watch them than the average magical in Britain. Lily couldn’t account for it.

Avery didn’t move, since he was already in his place. Emily, Laura and Lily stepped into the circle and spaced themselves evenly around the perimeter, even though the magic wouldn’t mind where they stood so long as they were within the perimeter and weren’t touching Avery. Lily stepped onto the plastic place mat that she had already laid out. Laura cracked her knuckles, drew her wand, and after a moment of eye contact with Lily, she muttered an incantation in Mandarin and maneuvered her wand through an energetic and complex movement that Lily had once spent a week trying to master, without success.

Lily felt the light beginning to build against her skin, golden and hot, as a spinning orb took shape in the open air before Laura’s furiously moving wand. As it became corporeal and grew to roughly the scale of a basketball, it was doused in blue, then patches of green and brown which took the shape of the continents. The spell was a universal locator of any target, if the caster had just murdered a non-magical human and harnessed the dark power of the act. Without the sacrifice, the still-questionably-legal spell was an aesthetically stunning parlor trick, and the most difficult spell Laura knew. The inky darkness of the vacant space surrounding the planet was taking shape around the miniature Earth, and Lily could see the flecks of a few stars emerging before she was distracted by Emily’s incantation.

“ _Dracisortia_ ,” she breathed, and her face paled and her wand grip became white-knuckled with effort, before a tiny, angry golden dragon appeared at the tip of her wand, no bigger than a salamander. Conjuring birds and snakes was child’s play; conjuring a dragon, a creature on the cusp of true sentience, was something Lily had never seen anyone do before, although she’d known Emily could. Emily wasn’t one to brag, but Laura was happy to do so on her behalf.

Now for Lily’s own exercise in magical exhaustion, and the act of unity. She waited until the air around her was dark and filled with pinpricks of stars, what had begun with a slowly spinning planet having expanded to a near-galaxy of visible stars; a perfectly formed moon hovering near the planet, a larger, nearer star obviously the blazing sun; Venus and Mercury visible between. She could see that Laura couldn’t go much further, then, so Lily braced herself, pointed her wand at herself and cast, “ _Reducio._ ”

Suddenly becoming the size of a fly was always disorienting, but doing so inside a perimeter that had taken on the appearance of a miniature space observatory was doubly so. The dragon, which Emily was very familiar with and swore was friendly, looked very large and terrifying where it soared above her, its scales glittering, apparently not sure whether it was more curious regarding the Earth-representative orb or the abruptly tiny human. Lily decided that looking up was doing bad things for her composure, and she was light-headed besides. She felt better when she crouched on her hands and knees, noting with dismay that she had nearly wound up past the edge of the place mat. Beyond the safety of that platform, the fibers of the carpet rose like furry trees. She knew from experience how someone on this scale could find herself wedged between them.

For a moment, she worried that Emily had uncharacteristically overestimated herself, and the dragon wasn’t coming. But then the plastic surface beneath her heaved, shifting under a more significant weight, and Lily looked up to see that the glittering dragon had joined her, and was eyeing her curiously.

The Moroccan Golden was one of the rarest of dragons, hunted nearly to extinction for the sad purpose of being kept as a pet. But dragons as a general rule wouldn’t breed in captivity, and the Golden was no exception. Too gentle and curious to evade a determined and knowledgeable would-be poacher, they were nearly wiped out for the past four hundred years except in certain, extremely secret sectors of wizarding space where they, along with other magical creatures endangered by humans both wizard and Muggle, which preserves were carefully guarded.

Good conjuring was really summoning, and Emily had been summoning this particular Moroccan Golden off and on for the past twenty years. It folded its wings, cocked its head, then lowered its neck obligingly for Lily.

Lily had always assumed Harry’s reckless tendencies came from James, but she couldn’t deny the enormous thrill of getting to her feet, shaky though she was, and climbing up the hot, silky, scaled hide of the dragon. At their respective sizes, it was not unlike scrambling onto an elephant. She had ridden one, once, outside a circus tent, her arms wrapped tightly around Petunia’s waist. The hide was rough and dry and the stride was slow and lumbering; a chain connected the shackle on the elephant’s right hind leg to a stake in the ground.

Really, the dragon was nothing like the elephant. It was a bolt of lightning, a shaft of light in a kaleidoscope; they shot through the air as though the dragon’s wings were incidental, and pure magic impelled them like an _accio_. Maybe it did. In any event, they were soon darting past the enormous, looming shape of what had to be Avery, but they were going too fast, somersaulting in space, for Lily to orient herself well enough to know. Then there was a vast reaching wall of mottled brown lines that had to be Laura’s wand, casting visible waves of force toward them that stretched the skin on Lily’s face against her bones and ripped her hair back violently like the most forceful of winds.

The dragon rerouted abruptly, and Lily could do nothing except cling tightly, molding her body as though she could become its second skin. How she stayed astride she couldn’t say, but then the dragon slowed abruptly, and they were hovering so near the magic’s representation of the Earth that she could see wisps of clouds beneath a shimmering net of ozone, and nearly make out the visible current of the Pacific ocean, curving from New England to Africa.

Then the dragon sped off again, and Lily closed her eyes, experiencing motion sickness on a level beyond nausea and nearer semi-consciousness, dedicating all of her energy to _holding on_ , even as she realized that the time period for which her strongest, self-cast shrinking spell could possibly last was almost up.

But the dragon seemed to comprehend this. It was drifting toward something— _down_ , she thought, if direction was dictated by where the dragon’s feet were, since she couldn’t say for sure but she felt like gravity was misbehaving in this dark semblance of outer space. Lily peered “down” also, and could see the figure of Earth’s moon for just a moment before the dragon’s body eclipsed it, just as its reaching claws gently grasped the silvery, cratered object.

Lily felt a familiar, inside-out sensation in her stomach, and barely had the presence of mind to leap from the dragon’s back and curl tightly into a ball before she had returned to ordinary size with a _pop_ reminiscent of that generated by apparition, as her body abruptly took up space that had been unoccupied before. She wound up on her side, with her knees against her chest, and though the arm resting on the floor was sore, she apparently hadn’t broken anything this time. Almost at the same moment, the energy for Laura’s spell finally ran out, and they were left with only the dragon as visible evidence that anything had happened within the perimeter at all.

Avery, however, was obviously receiving the secondary effect of their outpouring of magical sacrifice. His expression was wholly vacant, and though he stood with near-perfect posture, he was so unresponsive he might otherwise have been mistaken for dead. As it was, Lily’s heart pounded with the combination of exertion and concern so loudly she had an impulse to press her hand against her chest to contain it.

Lily felt pressure on her right hand, and then her left. Emily and Laura had come to stand to either side, and the dragon hovered with an air of impatience over Emily’s shoulder, as though wondering why it hadn’t been banished yet. Lily studied the little creature, trying to even out her breathing, and then turned to Laura.

“There’s really something to that charm,” she murmured. “It was…really, it was the _world_.” She struggled to express herself properly, her voice still hoarse from the physical and emotional chaos she’d just experienced. Laura’s dark red brows arched, and though she didn’t say anything, Lily had a feeling they would be talking at greater length on the subject very soon.

“How was it?” Emily looked the slightest bit envious. Lily felt her unsteady face form a wry smile.

“Ridiculous,” she admitted. That was the word Emily had used when Lily had proposed the act of unity, feeling like Harry arguing for the opportunity to play Quidditch when she used themes like _healing spells_ and _powerful cushioning charms._ “But…incredible.”

Emily rolled her eyes, but she squeezed Lily’s hand and her mouth quirked in a brief smile.

Long minutes passed, and Lily saw that Bette had stood from her chair and was standing just past the perimeter, wide-eyed and staring. They all watched Avery’s young, empty face, and he gazed beyond them all at whatever vision the ritual had supplied.

Then, some moments or hours later, Avery’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor.

Bette burst into tears, but before she could dissolve into full panic, Avery was sitting up of his own volition and assuring all of them that he was fine. When he met Lily’s eyes, though, his expression was worried.

“Get the pensieve,” he urged her. “I think you should see it right away.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I took a little break from this plot line to wrestle with writer's block and to write [The Summer Effect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14351712/chapters/33125706), which is a (sort of Snily shippy) side story from Severus's POV that runs parallel in time to Dear Lily and In Loco Parentis and concludes just before the first chapter of Only Two. If you haven't yet I hope you will give that story a try. Someone asked me wth happened between Severus and Lily in that period that made Only Two open with them in bed together and, frankly, even as I was writing that first chapter, in the back of my head I was thinking, "well, this is abrupt," so I thought that some extrapolation would be reasonable. The shape that effort took pleasantly surprised me.
> 
> Anyway, back to the story at hand - I have at least one more chapter planned for Only Two and then I will launch directly into the next story, which has two chapters finished already. If you have something to share in a comment or are interested enough to leave kudos it will definitely make my day. I try to answer questions and address concerns AND my writing is easily guided by your feedback, especially about plotlines and characters that interest readers most. An arguably critical comment is the sole reason I wrote the 8000+ words that is The Summer Effect at all. :)

“Jerome Travers is going to win,” Arabella told Gilderoy, matter-of-fact, sitting across from him in his sitting room in rather austere robes, for her. Hardly any cleavage on display; fabric a glittery black-on-black pattern of what the Muggles called paisley and the wizards called pailesy, and pretended to have invented.

Gilderoy didn’t ask her how she knew this. Arabella didn’t speculate. She didn’t like politics enough to want to engage in some sort of debate about them. That honor was reserved for runway trends and certain shoes. So Gilderoy mulled over this new fact and tried not to let the good wine taste entirely sour in light of it.

“There are those who say that the dark lord is active. That it is the only explanation for the way his followers are reaching out, rather boldly, though of course in perfect secrecy, as well. No one to whom they speak is free to reveal anything. The conversations are strictly, contractually secret. All that can be said is that they have occurred, and identities, locations and conversational points are all lost.”

“ _Memoria obscura_ ,” Gilderoy said softly. It is the wiser, more magically intricate cousin-spell to the heavy-handed _Obliviate_ which Gilderoy knew so well. Arabella watched him carefully.

“If the dark lord is behind all this, you’re ideally positioned,” she said.

“For what?” Gilderoy didn’t like the way his voice sounded: shrill and defensive.

“For anything,” she said, shrugging. “You could be close to Harry Potter, if you made any effort whatsoever.” Gilderoy opened his mouth to object, and she held up a forestalling hand. “I know you’re proud to have tortured him insofar, but he’s twelve. If you want to salvage his opinion of you with charm, you’re more than capable. You’re not stupid, Gilderoy. I’m not going to walk you through the implications.”

“I haven’t been disserved by neutrality,” Gilderoy said, not exactly in argument. He was aware that his position was different now than it had been during the first war. Then, he had nothing to make him an appealing ally or a threatening foe. Now, he was famous; a Hogwarts professor; a respected member of popular society and tolerated in most Pureblood circles.

“You’re too ambitious for that,” Arabella said, crossing her legs and turning her wineglass in her fingertips, as though admiring the firelight sparking in the deep red liquid, though it was clear to Gilderoy her attention was elsewhere, and more distant. “Everyone always saw Harry Potter as the dark lord’s foe, and traditionalists as the dark lord’s allies. But Sirius Black has been making nice with the old families, and Harry Potter – his heir, likely – sorted Slytherin. The dichotomy is no longer certain.”

Gilderoy knew more than Arabella about Sirius Black, actually. There weren’t _that_ many gay wizards in Britain attractive and wealthy enough to catch Gilderoy’s interest. Besides, the society pages loved to play up the drama of the whole openly-committed-to-a-werewolf scandal, which reached a fever pitch around the time they adopted that painfully adorable little werewolf puppy. And, for at least five hundred years, foolproof magical laws kept werewolves from any sort of proper inheritance.

“Anyway, you’ll be approached.” Gilderoy could see his silence had annoyed her, but he felt helpless and drunk and he was a quiet drunk and always had been. Unless drunk letter writing counted, which he really didn’t think it did. “You should be ready,” she added, a little more gently. Gilderoy nodded, and they passed the rest of the evening talking halfheartedly about lighter topics, including Gilderoy’s students, some of whom he was beginning to grudgingly like, and the poorly-concealed love affairs of Tessa Nott, a mutual acquaintance with respect to whom they had a shared, morbid fascination.

“Her little brother attends here, you know,” Gilderoy said, offhand. Theodore Nott was a quiet, thoughtful child that, for some reason, made Gilderoy uneasy with his perfect manners and thoughtful compliments.

“Ah, the dark horse for the Nott inheritance, isn’t he?” Arabella asked airily, the way she asked each and every question when she’d had this much wine. She was stretched out comfortably on the sofa by now, her bare feet dangling over the arm. At Gilderoy’s puzzled look, she explained. “He is almost twenty years younger than his sister, you know, but he was only conceived when the Lord and Lady realized what an embarrassment their firstborn really was.”

Gilderoy mulled that over. It wasn’t unheard of for families to have a couple children, though for Purebloods with only one title between the couple, it was a little more unusual. He hadn’t given it much thought, truthfully. The Notts, while respected once, had joined the Malfoys in a state of uncertain dishonor since the war, and kept a low profile. No one of the name convicted, citing the _Imperius_ defense, but with quite a different outcome in that unfriendly court of public opinion.

“Circe, the time,” Arabella swore, trying to leap to her feet and instead attaining verticality for only a half second before toppling back down onto the sofa with a gasp. She blinked for a dazed moment, then laughed. “I didn’t realize I was this drunk.”

“I did,” Gilderoy said. “Where do you think you’re going? I thought you would stay here.”

Arabella gave him a fond look. “As much as I enjoy our sad platonic cuddle sessions, I have a date. Where are your potions?”

Gilderoy’s brows rose, but he obligingly drew his wand and summoned a vial of Sober Up ( _by Pepper Up!_ the obnoxious red label reminded him) and watched it float swiftly past his face en route to Arabella, who fumbled once before snatching it out of the air. Arabella hated unnatural sobering agents, as a rule, claiming they made her break out.

“Must be quite the date,” Gilderoy said tonelessly, giving the clock on the wall a long and exaggerated glance. It was two a.m.

Arabella grimaced at the taste of the potion, then rolled her eyes at Gilderoy. “ _Quite_ , indeed, _mother_ ,” she drawled. “Don’t worry, the secret of my tattered dignity is quite safe.”

Gilderoy grinned in surprise. “A Muggle? Again?”

“ _The_ Muggle,” she corrected, not looking at him. “I’m going to be late.”

Gilderoy’s smile widened and he scoffed in honest disbelief. “The _same Muggle_ ,” he said, incredulous. Then, with even greater shock, “You’re _blushing_!”

“Shut. Up.” Arabella said, but kept her face turned away, as much a giveaway as the visible shell of her ear, which was bright red. “I’m going. Even though your floo is filthy. I pity you too much to demand you clean it right now.”

“You have to tell me more,” Gilderoy insisted. “You can’t say only that much, and then just _go_.”

She shot him a quick, wicked smile, heedless of her blush, which was only just beginning to fade. “Watch me.” Gilderoy thought, with clinical interest, that she was particularly beautiful with her cheeks pink-stained like that. Then she tossed powder at his floo and disappeared, speaking her destination too quietly for him to hear.

Gilderoy was only alone for a moment, still reeling with surprised delight - Arabella so rarely gave him any ammunition that he couldn’t help contemplating all the ways he could use this boon of material – when the floo chimed again. He was laughing when he got to his feet and ambled toward the face in the flames. “Take pity on me, did you?” He asked, and then realized that the head in the embers was not Arabella’s.

He didn’t know the face at all, in fact. He stared, abruptly silent, and the face stared back. It was female, of uncertain age, as a face made of fire always was, and the eyes were solemn and arresting – darkest brown or black in life, surely. After several seconds, Gilderoy cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Wrong floo?” he wondered, sure it could be nothing but a mistake. The face looked past him, very deliberately, at the clock, which must be only just visible to the caller, as it was on the far side of the room.

“Note the time,” said the face. “Ten.” Then, with a whoosh, the head disappeared and the flames eased back into natural fire.

Gilderoy frowned, turning to look at the clock. It was _not_ ten. Nor was it ten after two. It was, rather, a quarter after two, and that was not, in Gilderoy’s mind, a time of any significance at all. He decided to chalk it all up to the wrong floo, after all; possibly a demented caller, someone’s odd aunt loose and wandering the halls after the house was asleep. Maybe a prank, though he had to think it hadn’t come off as planned if it was. He forgot about the incident.

Until the night after the next, that is, when the floo chime woke him from a light sleep, and the same face said, “Note the time. Nine.” It was 2:25 a.m.

Two nights later, Gilderoy was awake when the face appeared and told him “Note the time. Eight.” It was 2:35, so Gilderoy had some sense of a pattern; though what might happen at final countdown, he wasn’t sure, he apparently had fourteen days to figure it out. He had no acquaintances at Hogwarts that would justify the casual mention of the floo calls, and perhaps it was just coincidence, but Arabella’s mention of someone “reaching out” had cast the entire experience in a sinister light.

He couldn’t help asking, while surrounded by other staff filing from the Great Hall after dinner the evening after “Note the time. Six,” whether anyone else had noticed their floo behaving oddly. He received a few surprised looks and shrugs. He felt Professor Snape’s long, silent stare like a cold hand on the back of his neck, but when he raised a brow inquiringly at the potions master, all he got in return was a black glare.

So, he fire-called Arabella, and told her all of it in a rush as soon as she came through.

“It’s them,” she said solemnly. “It must be.”

“ _Merlin_.” Gilderoy said. He had more or less reached the same conclusion himself, but it felt very real to hear her say it. Entertained in the solitude of his mind, the face in the fire had seemed somewhat imaginary, a late night dream, perhaps.

“You haven’t given what I said any thought, have you?” Arabella demanded, but though the words could have been cross, her tone was simply worried. She was even wringing her hands a bit, Gilderoy noted – rather touched.

“I have,” he insisted, his brow furrowing, pressed by stress into an old habit he had tried hard to abandon for good. _Wrinkles_ , after all. “It just haven’t had enough time.” Gilderoy always planned his life with careful strategy. Granted, he had come to Hogwarts at something of a low point, but he had done so in part because it bought time to regroup. Robbed of that, he was not at his intellectual best, and the usually hot-burning fire of his ego, which had fueled every self-interested calculation in his past, had been dulled by his months of self-imposed exile.

“Help me, Arabella,” he said, catching her restless hands hard in his. He searched her face. “I don’t know what to do.”

She was stronger than him, Gilderoy realized, when he saw her chin lift and the cloud of unease in her eyes clear away to a pure, resolved blue. “I can’t,” she said, and that hope that had started to build in Gilderoy disappeared with a suddenness that made him flinch. But then she squeezed his hands and added, “But I think I know who can.”

This was how Gilderoy found himself outside the door to Severus Snape’s rooms, which opened before he could raise his hand to knock.

*************

When Harry was little, he’d had all sorts of dreams. Nightmares, really; but unnaturally vivid and disturbing. Then, some time around his seventh birthday, they had stopped. After that, his mother asked him periodically whether he’d had any of “those” dreams, and Harry, always, said “no.”

She had never told him that the dreams might have something to do with his scar. Harry had put that together for himself based upon the look she had on her face when she asked about dreams, which was the same look she got on her face when she asked whether he had felt anything in his scar. Harry was fairly sure that his nightmares were from psychological trauma and his scar was from magical trauma, but other than that he tried not to think about either subject, at all. The scar was harder to forget because people stared at it all the time. And because it had hurt him, off and on, during that first year at Hogwarts. Dim, distant pain; almost like it was happening to someone else, and Harry was only feeling its echo.

Harry knew that his mother had cast some sort of spell on him when he turned six. He remembered sitting inside a circle made of lumpy silver spheres that Dr. Laura called pearls, and he remembered Dr. Emily’s steady, cool hands on his shoulders, making him feel safe even when the doctors and his mother called up a cool wind of magic that wrapped around him and felt like it was sinking into every inch of his skin.

They had done it again that Christmas holiday in his first year. After he told his mother he’d felt pain in his scar, the two of them had parted early from his uncles and Zack to drive to Taos. They spent the night in the little house that Harry barely remembered from his early childhood, and that next morning the Lahois and Lily called the magic up around Harry again. This time they didn’t build a perimeter or take any visible ritual steps; instead, they all just set their hands on him somewhere and closed their eyes, and he felt the magic spark and heat against his skin for a moment, then go still and undetectable once again.

“It’s a protective spell,” Lily had told him, and Harry hadn’t bothered to ask more. If it was about his scar or his dreams, he knew from experience nothing more would be said. But he began to think there was more than mere trauma at work.

On a Thursday night, three weeks into his time without Tom’s diary, Harry had another one of “those” dreams.

It was identifiable at once. Even though it had been years and Harry was very young when he last had one, he remembered the quality of the dreams as easily as he remembered the first time he had flown on a broom and the first time he had seen Hogwarts. They were experiences that had no parallel.

Harry did not feel surprised as he slipped into the dream, wherein he had the distinct sense of looking through someone else’s eyes with no ability to control or regulate the body he occupied. The dreams that had frightened him the most as a child were the ones where his vantage point was close to the ground, and he could sometime see the coils of the rest of the body – a snake’s body. There was something about the way the snake in particular took in its prey…

But this time, startlingly, the perspective was human. That had never happened before. Always it was an animal, or a blank darkness, wherein a voice spoke to him and emotions rolled over his skin as tangibly as silk or rainfall. This human body was walking down a dark and unfamiliar street. The buildings seemed familiar in some way, rowhouses with silver brick faces and roofs that seemed to be covered in colored, mosaic tile. The body seemed to pause; a long, slow blink cast Harry into further darkness for an instant.

_Harry_ , said that familiar, long-silenced voice. _It has been a while, hasn’t it?_

Harry at six had thought of this voice as a nightmare creature, whispering in delight at the horror it could so easily elicit, drawing out Harry’s innermost worries and thumbing through his every fear and shame like a boggart. Harry at twelve felt strangely self-possessed, and instead of terrified, he felt only deeply uneasy.

_Six years,_ Harry said, in the same way. He felt the voice’s surprise. Harry had never talked back, that he could recall. _Where are you?_

The body stepped into the shadows between two buildings and faced a wall. _It needn’t concern you,_ the voice said silkily. _I’ll stop here so that you’ll have my full attention. Harry, Harry. Harry Potter._

Then Harry felt that familiar pressing around the boundaries of his thoughts, and then he was afraid. There was nothing that felt more deeply violating than _this_ , this sinister voice inside a changeable body looking through Harry’s memories, all the thoughts and feelings meant to be _his_ and _only his_ …

_Slytherin_ , the voice said, without emotion. Harry was still reeling from the sense of having his mind cracked open like a nut, and couldn’t dwell on the implications of that abrupt _emptiness_ , where, before, there had always been scorn and mockery. _And…_ that _diary. Harry. I did not realize I was still capable of surprise._

The body turned from the wall. Harry could barely bring himself to look at the buildings and the people they passed. He felt wrung out, deeply confused, and only wished for the dream to end. But for all that, his natural curiosity won out, and he suddenly realized the architectural style of the buildings was distinct. He had visited the famously beautiful wizarding district in Montreal with his mother many times. Until he began school, it was where they had spent every Christmas. Here it was, without pillows of snow but still unmistakable.

He couldn’t hide his realization from the voice. He felt it notice the conclusion, and then he felt its displeasure.

_Wake up now, child_ , the voice said.

Harry did; gasping, sweating, and startling so badly he fell out of bed. This woke Blaise and Theo but not Draco, who was a light sleeper and had therefore convinced his mother to spell his bed curtains with silencing charms before coming to school.

“Are you okay, Harry?” Blaise asked, crouching down beside him. Harry found the concerned look on Blaise’s face, and the warm weight of his hand on Harry’s shoulder, almost overwhelmingly gratifying. He had felt very alone, lately.

“Do you need the hospital wing?” Theo looked less personally invested than Blaise in the prospect of Harry being deathly ill or injured, but there was a small measure of sincere concern on his face that almost pushed Harry over the edge.

“It was just a nightmare,” Harry managed, face heating with the force of many emotions, none of them embarrassment.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Blaise assured him, with such perfect lack of perception that Harry bit out a rough, high laugh. In the act of looking away from Blaise, he inadvertently looked _at_ Theo, whose concerned frown had shifted to something more knowing. Theo had a way of looking through a person, and he was using that skill now, Harry thought. But Harry was still too emotionally spent to be embarrassed, so he just met Theo’s stare, still trying to catch his breath.

“Well,” Theo said lightly. “I won’t be able to go back to sleep now. Thanks a lot, Potter. Why don’t you go have a shower, then you and Zabini can entertain me by losing a game or two of wizard’s chess.”

Harry had never perceived a single overture of friendship from Theo Nott. Experiencing it now, he was more than a little confused. Blaise, apparently convinced that Harry wasn’t in mortal peril, gave Harry’s shoulder one last squeeze and released him. “It is after five,” Blaise said grimly. “No use trying to squeeze in another hour of sleep, I suppose.”

“Classes aren’t until nine,” Harry reminded them. They both laughed while Harry looked between them, confused.

“Not all of us just roll out of bed in the mornings just in time for breakfast, Potter,” Blaise said fondly. “I may not spend the hours grooming myself that Malfoy does, but I take a _degree_ of pride in my appearance.”

Harry blinked. “I’m insulted,” he said, and then grinned just in case they might think he was serious.

“Go on, Potter,” Blaise said, getting to his feet and wrinkling his nose. “You _are_ a bit damp. I’ll start off Nott’s winning streak for us. Your chess set, I assume, Theo?”

“Of course,” Theo said, already reaching into his trunk for the box. Harry wiped his damp hands on his damp pajama bottoms, and wrinkled his nose. They were right. A shower was in order. He shuffled off to the bathrooms, reluctant to be alone, but glad to have the prospect of Blaise and Theo’s bickering to return to. Theo, who regularly played with Blaise and Daphne, hadn’t once asked Harry to play before.

Between the dream and the sense of reintegration with his dorm mates, Harry spent most of the next day too distracted to think even once about Tom’s diary.


	20. Chapter 20

Harry’s mother would be furious if he didn’t tell someone about the dream. 

The problem was, she was out of an owl’s reach. And it was the day before the half moon, so Sirius and Remus were somewhere deep in a distant forest with Zack, for their supplemental ritual. Harry considered the headmaster, but he was fairly sure his mother didn’t like Professor Dumbledore, and quite sure that Harry didn’t.

That left him with one option. 

After his last class (Defense, during which Professor Lockhart made uncharacteristically few demands upon Harry) Harry waved to Blaise and Nott, still filled with a pleasant feeling at the renewed connection, and went to the dungeons while the other Slytherin went to the Quidditch pitch. No one in Harry’s year played, but a few positions were opening the following year so Harry, Greg and Vince had been practicing. Draco, who had a personal pitch and supposedly a private coach at home, claimed he didn’t need it.

He knocked on Professor Snape’s office door, and waited anxiously for it to open. When it did, his head of house looked downright harried, which was so unlike him that Harry said nothing and only blinked stupidly until Professor Snape arched a brow in query.

”Yes, Mr. Potter?”

Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir. But, er. May I speak to you?”

”You seem to be speaking to me right now, boy. But I assume you mean privately, so yes, come in.”

Harry knew better than to take Professor Snape’s manner very personally, but he felt particularly awkward in his presence since he had returned from Egypt. Obviously something was going on with Harry’s mother and Professor Snape’s...relationship, if that was the right word. Not for the first time, Harry wished fervently that his mother could have chosen someone who was _not_ Harry’s teacher to fancy. But when he remembered how happy she’d looked at Christmas, it was hard to mean it very much.

They sat across Professor Snape’s desk from one another, Harry picking at his fingernails in a way he hadn’t since - well, since the last time he’d had the dreams. He colored and made himself stop, but he saw by Professor Snape’s frown that he’d noticed Harry’s cuticles, red and starting to bleed.

”Go ahead, Harry,” Professor Snape said, so gently that Harry was struck wordless again, much as he had been in the doorway. His professor sighed. “Speak,” he said, in a firmer voice, to Harry’s relief.

Harry told him about the dream. As he spoke, he watched tension build in Professor Snape’s jaw, and his brows lower progressively nearer his eyes, which had become quite hard and grim.

When he finished, Harry swallowed and waited for Professor Snape to say something. Professor Snape rubbed his left forearm as though it pained him, and Harry watched him, thoughtfully.

”We must notify your mother immediately,” Professor Snape decided. “Is she...”

”Still in Taos,” Harry confirmed. “I can send her a signal, but all it would tell her is that I’m in danger. Which seems...I mean, it would scare her. I don’t want that any time, but especially not today. There was a ritual they had planned for tonight.” Harry didn’t know whether they’d found a Seer at the last minute or not.

Professor Snape was frowning, a groove between his eyebrows suggesting deep thought. Harry pondered Avery’s pouch, but anything he would send his mother would contain information he was sure she wouldn’t want Avery to know. Would she?

Before he could run the possibility past Professor Snape, the Wizard was speaking. “I’ll go tell her, personally. It would be the fastest way.”

Harrys brows rose. “Don’t you need a permit to use the international floo?”

”That is a legal requirement,” his professor said crisply, “not a magical limit.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask, but a brief look from Professor Snape made him rethink, and he closed it again. “Go back to your dormitory, Mr. Potter. And I am telling you in no uncertain terms: make no effort to recover that diary.”

The dorms were quiet, as the other boys were still at the pitch and likely would be until dark. Harry lay on his bed, finding the idea of sleeping left him with a nervous flutter, but his eyelids were heavy and he was undeniably tired. He stretched out on his bed, expecting to lie there for just a few minutes and rest his eyes. But as soon as he did, the dream came for him as though it had been waiting.

As they sometimes had, all those years before, this dream began with a floating sensation in a dark purple mist. This time, though, it was Tom’s voice he heard.

”They’re coming for me, Harry,” he said, sounding scared. But also, somehow, sounding like the _other_ voice. Hadn’t Harry thought, before, that Tom’s voice was familiar?

”What do you mean, another voice?”

”I think it’s Voldemort, speaking to me,” Harry murmured. The floating sensation deepened, and Harry made out Tom, floating as well, closer to Harry than Harry could remember in their previous conversations, when the diary put Harry in Tom’s memories.

”No one will tell me, but I think it’s him, and that my mother always knew.”

”There aren’t many people you can trust, are there, Harry?” Tom sounded sadder still. “You can trust me, though I know you don’t believe it.” he laughed bitterly. “Not that I’ll be around much longer, anyway.”

Trepidation filled Harry. “What do you mean?”

”They’re coming to find me now, and when they do, they’ll kill me,” Tom said simply. 

Harry was seized with fear. How could he have forgotten how important Tom was to him, or doubted his innocence? It ashamed Harry how quick he’d been to set aside his concern for the only friend he’d had all school year. 

“I won’t let them,” Harry said firmly, heart soaring when Tom’s despairing expresssion shifted to one of cautious hope.

”It may be too late. I can sense the danger...I think it’s close.”

”Then I’ll have to hurry,” Harry said. “But first I have to wake up...”

As soon as Harry said the words there in the dream, his eyes opened and he was awake again, lying in his bed, with a sense that very little time had passed. Heart hammering, the emotions in the dreams still coursing through him with unnatural tenacity, he leapt from his bed and set off in search of Draco.

****

Sirius and Narcissa met on a day when Lucius was out for the afternoon for a Quidditch match. It was only their second meeting since she had first arrived in his Ministry office. In preparation for Sirius’s visit, Narcissa had assembled the elves and made it clear that they were not to eavesdrop upon Sirius and Narcissa’s conversations. They couldn’t disobey an order from her, exactly, unless it was in direct conflict with an order from Lucius. But she was glad to receive only solemn nods in response to her instructions, rather than any expressions of inner torment that suggested Lucius had asked the elves to keep an eye on her. She wasn’t sure whether guilt or relief prevailed at that realization. Lucius trusted her, as she had always trusted him. Until now.

When Sirius stepped out of the floo, they exchanged terse nods, and walked in silence toward the library. Sirius had his hands deep in the pockets of his robes, frowning in consternation, and Narcissa touched his elbow in a way she meant to be reassuring. He startled, looked over at her in surprise, then forced a smile.

“It was not my intention to distress you, though I suppose I understood that my proposal would do so, inevitably.”

Sirius sighed, pausing in the middle of the hallway, his hands flexing open and closed where they hung at his sides. It was an anxious habit that Narcissa remembered from when he was a child. She and her sisters had always doted on their cousin, as much for his natural charm as his status in the family. Even when things have been turbulent between Sirius and his parents, everyone knew the blood magic would protect his status as the heir, and remaining in his favor had been a priority. The habit of soothing him hadn’t dulled with age, but it was no competition for Narcissa’s fiercest compulsion: protecting Draco, in every way.

“I know that.” Sirius waved his hand, dismissive. “I’m not the only one with competing loyalties, here. I know that.” He gave her a considering look, not without sympathy. “I’ve seen you and Lucius together, after all. Much as I dislike him.”

Narcissa fought back a wave of emotion before it could register on her face. A talent perfected after a lifetime of practice. She cleared her throat and began walking again. Sirius followed.

“Remus will understand,” Sirius said, though he couldn’t have sounded less sure. “I’m sure Lucius will, one day.”

“It’s kind of you to say so,” Narcissa said. She was sure the opposite was true, at least with respect to her husband. She didn’t know Sirius’s werewolf well enough to opine. But it didn’t matter. There had never been a dilemma, in Narcissa’s heart. It pained her to chart this course, but she had no doubt that it was the only option, as soon as she became certain that her runes were behaving reliably when they gave her Lucius’s face. Just that morning, she had checked them once again, in case what had been fixed for several months should change. It had not. She lay out the configuration, placed the fresh nebula stone, and bade the elements reveal her family’s hope and her family’s enemy. She saw Draco. She saw Lucius. There was no question who was whom.

“Come,” Narcissa said, touching the doors to the library so that they opened in welcome. The manor might question her loyalties if it was paying more attention, but, perhaps fortunately, the manor was rather sedate, as wizarding homes went. Its attitude reminded Narcissa that the Malfoys were originally a strictly light family.

Within, the library was as impressive as ever. Seeing Narcissa, one of the statues in the vast fountain, a dryad of some kind, lifted a bronze arm and bowed in a gesture of supplication, then began reciting one of her favorite poems at a pleasant volume, just audible over the sound of rushing water. Narcissa often came here, to reflect or rest as often as to read, and encouraged the spontaneity of the statuary.

Sirius glanced at Narcissa in amusement when the poem took a bawdy turn, praising the masculine attributes of its subject, and Narcissa arched a brow at him, unflinching. He rolled his eyes and led the way to a large table where a white-robed elf called Urtl was repairing the protective spells on a stack of books by setting a book before him, placing his long-fingered hands on the cover and muttering to himself, then passing the finished book to a young elf waiting at his left. When handed the book, the young elf disapparated to reshelf, then appeared again a moment later to wait for the next one.

Narcissa, quite familiar with this routine, watched Urtl for a few seconds before deciding he was at a stopping point, then stepped forward. Urtl, quite familiar with Narcissa coming and going without acknowledging his presence, continued at his task until Narcissa quietly cleared her throat. Then he looked up and slid out of his chair to bow politely. Urtl was a Malfoy elf, but he was also a Malfoy Library elf, and the culture there was less manic than in the rest of the manor. Narcissa rather liked Urtl.

“Lord Black is seeking a particular book of my husband’s,” Narcissa said. “A leather-bound volume, handwritten, with certain imbued magical properties.”

Urtl became very still. “The library is not releasing Malfoy family artefacts to visitors.” He fixed Sirius with a shrewd look and said the word “visitors” in a tone that was not polite.

Amused, Narcissa allowed herself a small smile. “It is also _my_ wish to examine the book.”

For a long moment, Ertl paused, and Narcissa had the unfamiliar experience of shock. Perhaps her husband did not trust her as fully as she believed.

But then the moment passed. “Of course, my Lady,” said Ertl, and snapped his fingers. A harmless-looking leather bound book, rather worn, appeared on the table. Sirius and Narcissa exchanged a brief glance, then Narcissa took the necessary step forward to pick it up.

In the same moment, the doors to the library burst open, and she heard her son’s voice cry, “Mother! Don’t!”

****

Draco raced forward while Hermione hung back in the doorway, trying not to gape at the library. There was an _evil_ , _Voldemort-associated_ artefact to intercept, after all, but. It was the most _amazing library Hermione had ever seen_. It might even be the most amazing library Hermione had ever _dreamed_ of seeing, which was saying something, since in Hermione’s dreams, heaven itself was a library.

“Really?” Draco deadpanned, and when Hermione focused again, she found that Narcissa Malfoy, Draco, and a handsome adult that must be Sirius Black were all staring at her.

“Um, sorry,” Hermione said. “But like Draco said, you’d better not touch that book.”

Narcissa put one hand on her hip and pointed at Draco with the other. “Explain. Now.”

Draco started at the beginning, with the library fire—it was obvious by Narcissa’s expression that she had heard a very different explanation for the loss of her antique table—followed by Lucius’s inquiries about a leather-bound blank diary, followed by Harry, keeping just such a diary with him at all times throughout the term.

“Then, today,” Draco continued, “before _we_ could confront _Harry_ , _he_ confronted _me_ , saying my elf had stolen something from him. So Hermione and I came, because I knew father was gone, to confront _Dobby_ , but when we got here and I summoned him he said that father had left strict orders with the elves that if any of them laid a hand on the diary their first act must be to bring it to him. So Dobby _did_ , and then before we could search father’s office”—at this admission, Narcissa’s frown deepened and Draco blushed but forged ahead—“we thought we should at least _check_ the library. And it was a good thing we did!”

Hermione edged nearer to Draco, for moral support, while the adults considered them with narrow looks. They were cousins, Hermione remembered, thinking that it showed in the shape of their frowns and the shade of grey in their eyes.

“What is it you think you know about this diary?” Sirius asked at last.

“Well,” Draco began, uncertainly, “Harry said someone is trapped inside of it. Someone who wants to get out. He also said that he has ‘reason to know’ that the dark lord is interested in the diary.” Draco looked quickly at his mother, who nodded almost imperceptibly, and then he added, “And father has some of the dark lord’s possessions, for safekeeping, should he r-return.” At this last, he glanced at Hermione, who felt a little chill at the mention of a “return,” but it was fainter than it would have been had she not already formed her own suspicions on the topic, and slowly come to terms with them as best she could.

“Miss Granger,” Narcissa Malfoy said quietly, “I’m afraid, were this conversation to go any further in your presence, you would find yourself with secrets you would not care to be burdened with. They are a considerable weight.”

Hermione knew her eyes had never been wider in her life. It was difficult, but she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, in a clear voice, “Draco is my friend. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

Narcissa’s look softened very slightly for a moment, then firmed again. “I appreciate that. However, I must ask both of you to wait outside while I speak to Sirius, and we determine the wisest course of action with respect to the artefact.”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped, but she didn’t have it in her to argue with an authority figure, especially not when it was something of a relief to have turned the whole business over to adults. Certainly that was the best thing to do, when one was barely thirteen years old. She glanced at Draco, who was solemn, but ducked his head in his mother’s direction and turned to go. Hermione reluctantly followed him. At the door, she turned her head to hiss in his ear, “You _have_ to let me come back to your library at, you know, a better time.”

Draco jerked his head around to stare at her, then shook his head as though mystified. “ _Really_? _That’s_ what you want to…oh, never mind. Come on, Hermione. You have to try the fudge our elves make. There’s nothing better.”

Hermione primly thought that libraries were a far graver matter than _chocolate_ , but she didn’t argue. Fudge sounded pretty good.

****

The Lahois’ pensieve was much different than its European-style counterpart. For one thing, it was wooden, and for another, it was long, rectangular, and shallow. Intricate designs were carved over nearly every inch of its surface. Examined closely, Lily had always thought the pattern resembled neurologists’ depictions of firing neurons. She watched impatiently while Emily prepared the pensieve fluid, and Laura talked Avery though the process of extracting his memory. The boy’s wand, which Lily realized she had never seen before, was interesting – rather boxy, and unadorned except for the handle, which had a rounded bottom into which the face of a roaring lion was carved, framed by a tousled mane.

“Go on then, give it a try,” Laura said encouragingly, while Emily finished incanting over the water and poured it into the penseive, which was positioned in the center of the floor, near where the ritual had been conducted. The perimeter had already been cleared away, and the fog of magic in the room had all but dissipated. Lily felt exhausted, and had the uncomfortable urge to wind one arm around Laura, the other around Emily, and then sleep in that position for days. She thought, wryly, that she would never get used to the temporary bond after such a strong ritual, no matter how fond she was of the other ritualists.

“I think that worked,” Avery said, smiling, and expelled the silver thread of his memory into the penseive. The ordinary transparency of the water there changed to molten silver at the contact. Laura smiled, looking as tired as Lily felt, and then looked up at Emily.

“You’ve seen this sort of memory before,” she said, and Lily knew she meant the memory of a Seer’s vision. “Care to talk Lily through it?”

Anxious as she was to see whatever the pensieve contained, Lily made herself focus on Emily, who was nodding.

“It won’t be exactly what Avery saw, most likely. We can all discuss the differences afterward.”

“Why?” Avery asked, frowning. “It’s my memory, isn’t it?”

“It’s what was contained in your mind at the time,” Emily corrected. “Usually we call that a memory, but in your case, there was more to what you received than just feedback from your senses. You’re a seer, and the vision is your mind’s interpretation of messages that people aren’t designed to understand. The theories are ultimately rather vague. Someone really should do a double blind study using…”

Lily cleared her throat. Emily’s mouth quirked in an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, not the time. Lily, you first, naturally.”

Lily bent over the penseive, and just before the water would have touched her nose, she felt the familiar but always-unsettling falling sensation instead. After she landed on her feet in long, green grass, she looked around and immediately recognized the garden behind Grimmauld Place.

”Here,” said Avery, and Lily realized he was standing beside her, pointing at the house. “But not only here.”

”Here?” Lily echoed in disbelief. “For how long?”

”Thirteen years.”

Lily’s brow furrowed. “But that’s not possible.”

”Eight of the enemy. One of you.”

Lily wanted to argue, but the pensieve was already forcing her out. It felt much harder and more irregular coming out than it had going in. When she raised her head, she looked at Avery in disbelief.

”That’s it?”

He shrugged. “Mine wasn’t very long either. It said I sought one destination but it would be in six places. It looked like Harry talking to me. But of course it wasn’t. We were outside Hogwarts, I think. It was a castle with a big lake, like I’ve heard it described. Harry—I guess, what looked like Harry, in the vision, said ‘Two here and the rest to the ritualists.’”

Quite suddenly, Lily understood. She turned wide eyes on Emily and Laura. “What did you see?”

“Near a wreckage of some kind. Maybe an old house? A girl was there; I didn’t recognize her, but she was quite homely, poor thing. She said ‘One where I lived.’”

”Always riddles, isn’t it?” Laura looked grim. “I was outside a fancy place. Looked English, Lily, so I’ll see if I can sketch it for you. A girl who might have been the same as Emily’s—although if it was, ‘homely’ is generous, sweetheart—said, “And one where he loved.’”

Unbearably frustrated, Lily tried to console herself with that first realization, which did mean something even if none of the rest of it made any sense. 

“He did it,” she said. “He must have divided his soul. Horcruxes, they’re called in theory. So the spell is telling us he’s in seven...pieces, I suppose.”

Everyone in the room stared at her.

”Um, could you back up?” Avery asked, looking extremely confused. “Divided his _soul_?”

Abruptly, Lily remembered how tired she was. “Sleep, Avery.” She added, seeing his frown, “Sorry, but I promise you would understand if you knew how exhausted we are.”

Laura and Emily had come up on either side of Lily and put an arm around her. It felt so good she almost collapsed on the spot. Avery, suddenly looking uncomfortable, shot a look at bette and began inching toward the door.

”Um, okay. So, you’ll call?”

Emily nodded and Laura made a shooing gesture, and when the kids were gone the three women all but fell into the Lahois’ bed, and Lily was asleep before she could think about how awkward it could be in the morning.

it was morning—the next morning—when Lily woke, alone, to the sound of someone knocking loudly on the door. She heard Emily’s voice call, “Coming, coming,” and the sound of the door opened. Then, softer voices she couldn’t make out, except that one sounded like...

Lily shot upright. She had shucked off her jeans before climbing into bed, so she thoughtlessly arrived in the living room with her hair tangled and wearing just a t-shirt, her underwear, and one sock. The man standing in the doorway gaped at her, and Lily gaped back.

”Severus,” she managed at last. “What are you doing here?”

”So this is him,” Emily drawled, her eyebrows high and her grin delighted. “Lily. You’ve never brought someone home before. Dr. Emily Lahoi, professor. It’s very nice to meet you.”

Lily numbly watched Severus and Emily shake hands, then she repeated her question, her tone somewhat less imperious because she had just realized she wasn’t wearing any pants. Severus, for his part, was wearing very nice pants. Muggle jeans, in fact, which Lily had bought and in which he looked good. Very good.

”I’m here because...” Severus glances at Emily and cleared his throat, correctly deducing it was safe to speak a confidence around her. “Because Harry had a certain kind of dream.”

The fog of confusion, in which Lily had been closely admiring Severus’s long thighs as showcased by his jeans, cleared quite abruptly at this announcement. Emily made a startled noise.

”When?” Emily asked because Lily was still struggling to simply think. She watched the rabbit hop slowly around the corner of the hallway, pause at the sight of Severus, and twitch its nose. 

“Yesterday, or rather very early yesterday morning, he reckons.”

Lily’s eyes widened at the various implications, and Severus, catching her look, was quick to reassure her. “He’s fine. He came to me because his uncles weren’t available. I thought...well, by flooing here at once, I would reach you the most quickly.”

Emily looked dangerously near laughter, but Lily didnt understand why until she spoke, sounding absolutely incredulous. “You thought taking the floo and then hoofing it—from, what, Tijuana? The Knockturn Alley ticket you can pay out the nose for if you know someone dodgy enough?—you thought _that_ would _be the_ fastest...good gracious, son. What about the telephone?”

Despite—or maybe because of—everything, Lily burst out laughing. She laughed herself to tears, and wiped them away to find Severus and Emily looking identically bemused by her outburst. Feeling faint and tired and sad that she didn’t have the luxury of walking up to Severus and kissing him, when she’d behaved horribly the last time they’d spoken, Lily tried to sober up as well as she could. Then she sighed.

”I always forget about it, too,” she told Severus, trying a smile and feeling pleased wheb he didn’t immediately scowl in return. He didn’t smile, either, but there was time for that. She’d been planning an apology, and though his sudden appearance advanced her timeline a bit, she was glad.

Emily bent and picked up the rabbit. “Well, Laura is out at the Pueblo. Maybe we should join her, AJ.” She winked baldly at Lily and left via the front door.

By the time Emily and Laura came home late that afternoon, Laura carrying the rabbit this time, Lily was back in bed. But in the guest room, this time; and while she was just as powerfully drawn to touch her bedmate as she had been the night before, this time it had nothing to do with a spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to know what you think! The first chapter of the next installment is UP!


End file.
